Do not reach for the black and red background
Wednesday May 23rd 2007, 11:25 am
Filed under: Amaryllis


The amaryllis bud is still going up despite having start to split open; this is unusual. I’m quite curious to see how far it goes.

Biology lesson of the day: yes, that was (thank you Google) a black widow spider, and it can run faster than I can swing my tennis-racket bug zapper at it, even if that’s as close as I wanted to get to it. I am reminded of the time when I was a kid that I stepped on some leaves and startled a snake next to Cabin John Creek, and it threw itself away from me just as fast as it could go while I did the same in the opposite direction.

No, wait–having typed that, I went back in the bathroom, zapper in hand, and it had reappeared in the middle of the wall. Got it.


7 Comments so far
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Yeah! I don’t like spiders!

Comment by knitting by Steph 05.23.07 @ 1:03 pm

EEK! But it makes a great story.

Alex tells me a snake jumped on her when she went out to see the chickens this morning.

Comment by Michelle 05.23.07 @ 1:16 pm

Maybe it’s just late, but where is a black widow spider? I don’t see one anywhere. Good job ‘getting’ it, but was it in a picture and I missed it?

Scratching my head,
Miss K.

Comment by Miss Knotty 05.23.07 @ 8:37 pm

Nah, the headline was cute, but it ran before the picture snapped, and then when I caught it later the fried-spider pictures just didn’t come out and I didn’t post one. (I imagine that’s probably quite all right, eh?) The funny thing is, it turns out I’d seen a few before in the garage but hadn’t thought much of it–black widows have a red thing on their abdomens, right? Those had brown markings. Well, this one was a vivid red violin-shape mark with the sun full on it coming through the skylight–but later, when it had moved away from direct sun, it appeared brown and much duller. Zap it, look in the sunlight–goodness. I think I’ll be more careful from now on…I’m not normally an eek-it’s-a-spider type, but, um, well, gophers are cute but black widows definitely don’t make it into the pet category.

The blog is going to stay at spindyeknit.com but it’s about to move off Blogger, possibly tonight, and it might be frozen for a day or so. I guess we’ll find out.

Comment by AlisonH 05.23.07 @ 9:17 pm

The periwinkle thing sure is growing. Can’t wait to see it blocked out.

I would say the spider was only seeking out its own kind, but I’m not sure that kind of spider actually creates webs. Perhaps it was attracted to the one you had on the needles…. 🙂

Comment by Arlene 05.24.07 @ 6:01 pm

Hello? Hello? (Taps microphone.) Hello?

Comment by AlisonH 05.24.07 @ 6:19 pm

We had a large black crunchy bug in the bathroom last night. Don’t know the real name but they crunch when I step on ’em. Olivia would not go in there today alone.

Comment by Sonya 05.24.07 @ 8:14 pm



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