A Little Un-nerving

But still kind of fascinating.

Any guesses on what is happening here?

No, they aren't mating. Those are two female Black Widows.

So here's the story. My boss thinks it's kind of creepy that I have "pet" Black Widow at my desk (so do most of my co-workers, though they are fascinated watching her capture and eat her food). I usually find a fly or other slow moving insect to throw in for her. She rather enjoys most everything. Except maybe that stink bug I gave her just before Christmas. That smell kind of knocked her silly for a while. But she recovered and ate very well.

So one day, my boss comes in and hands me an empty fountain drink cup. I take it to throw away, thinking he is just being lazy. But he tells me I should look inside. What do you think he brought me? Another Black Widow. Now what does he expect me to do with ANOTHER Black Widow?

It's not moving much, this new one in the cup of left over Diet Pepsi. So it wasn't hard to remove it and put it in with the other Widow. Well? What else was I supposed to do with it? We all wondered what would happen. Would they fight? Live together harmoniously? Who knows? I do.

The new Black Widow didn't move much (I think she was too high on caffeine), but enough to attract the attention of the "resident" Black Widow. And she didn't waste any time deciding how to deal with this new addition to her web.

Resident BW (bottom) wrapping up the intruder (top).

The residue Diet Pepsi on the new Black Widow kind of made the other a little loopy for a while. I guess caffeine doesn't sit well with spiders. But again, she recovered, and continued her wrapping process.

Resident BW soon had the intruder over in her favorite corner, and sat there casually consuming the now lifeless spider.

So now we all know. If another spider ends up in the web of Black Widow, she won't take kindly to it. What's left of one unfortunate spider is proof of that.

My new cubicle-mate

I am in an office of cubicles. There isn't much room as it is, and because of what I do for my job, my cubicle is generally very cluttery. Bins of program materials, mounted snake skins and insects, extra binoculars for young visitors, puppets, books stuffed with leaves for pressing, books and binders and magazines, posters with fish, diagrams of the sun, and water cycles stuffed in some corner, gifts for volunteers, a spotting scope, my binoculars, and my hiking pack among a few other things.

And now I have actually, willingly, agreed to share my already crowded space with another. Luckily, she doesn't take up too much space, and sits quietly on my desk in a nicely sized plastic container.

She arrived almost two weeks ago in a state that lead me to believe she was almost dead. She stayed in a one-inch square observation collection cube the entire time I was gone on vacation. I was sure she would be very expired by the time I got back. And actually didn't think much of her when I left.

However, upon my return, I found she was still quite alive and doing her best to do what she does best, spinning a very haphazard web in the space she had. There was frass on the bottom of the container telling me her digestive system was still functioning quite well. I felt terrible that she had been left, cooped up so uncaringly, for so long.

I quickly remedied that situation. A much larger container, covered on the bottom with potting soil, moss ledges to hide under, sticks to help with web anchoring, and a seemingly dead, but still walking around, wasp - and she was set.

It didn't take her long to whip up a rudimentary web and snare that wasp.

She worked hard and fast to bind the wings, and continued to work hard to try and bind the very active abdomen as the wasp struggled with more life than I thought was in it. The wasp's pincers were flying, and doing a great job of keeping Mrs. Widow at bay.

Look at the wasp, just flinging around, fighting back with all it had. And she was working as hard as she could to get her web wrapped around it to immobilize it in order to get a bite in. She did manage to get to the wasps abdomen once, and attempted several times to bite it. But I guess that exoskeleton was just too hard for her, and so she went for the head instead.

This wasp almost proved too much for her to handle. In her attempts to wrap it up, she got too close to those flying pincers, and lost one of her palps. You can see it there, stuck in the web just in front of her. She seemed to back off after that. And I had to call it a night myself.

However, upon my return this morning, the wasp was quite dead, and she had dislodged it from her web. I assume she won out in the end.