Staying Limber Doing The "Spider Limbo"

I didn’t see it coming.  There is a small portion of my daily walk with the dog that I can actually have him off-leash, and I was lost in thought, when, wham, my head and upper torso were completely swathed in spider webbing.  Even I say, “Yuck!”  Followed by, “Sorry, I am so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention”. I was encased in webbing from my head to my waist, complete with all the victims of the past nights hunt, wrapped in their spider saran wrap.  Double yuck, and for the next 10 minutes of the walk I am trying to peel it off my white shirt, and untangle web wisps from hair wisps.

May I say, again, “Everything’s bigger in Texas” and this orb weaver was THE biggest spider I think I have ever seen.  Larger then the Black and Yellow Garden Spider I was familiar with on the Cape,

 it is omnipresent along the path I take through the Ashe Junipers with the dog.  I did some research and it is called, appropriately, a Giant (amen to that) Lichen (for its beautiful green camouflage that looks lichen-like) Orb Weaver.  (Araneus bicenterairius) 

Named by one, Rev McCook, who went from Civil War chaplain as part of his family, the “Fighting McCooks”, to later a civilian minister who loved all things Arachnid and would write a three volume set on the Orb weavers alone. (This fact and so many others used in this blog were gained by reading a most wonderfully in-depth Bug blog by Jerry Cates, found at BugsInTheNews.com )

It turns out that this is a fairly rare spider (not on my trail it isn’t!).  However, the recent spring rains produced a bumper crop of grasshoppers and has provided more food than even a spider of this size can eat, and so, they are flourishing.  Good for them.  It is an Orb weaver, but one that leaves the center of the circle open instead of filling it with “writing” as in the garden spider I mentioned above. (new fact to me: that “writing” is termed “stablimenta”) 

  But its huge body fills the space nicely when it is there, and it makes the web easier to spot and to dodge.  Which brings us to the title of this little piece.  I find I have to “limbo” under them, and as there are 5 in a row, as I walk up this hill it is quite a workout!  Singing the Chubby checkers song “Doing the Limbo rock”, I go on my way.

Yesterday the encounter brought one of those serendipitous moments where I arrived just as dinner was being “wrapped up” as it were.  The spider was spinning the latest victim turning it in silk so quickly you would have thought it was on a lathe. 

 Wow, I love that and again, if you can find it in your heart to be wowed by spiders, do some reading on their silk production.  They can spin so many different types of silk, all different strengths for different uses.  The silk is stronger than steel, yet flexible, and when they utilize all their different kinds of silk to wrap the egg cases; the eggs can easily survive through the harshest of climates. And as I can testify, the webbing clings to clothes and hair with a stunning tenacity.

For that matter, I am just in from, “walking the land” and I repeated the “wham, oh yuck, oh sorry” episode in my own yard, for one is stringing a web across a path that I use every day to get to a bird feeder.  I explained it would not be wise to continue with this web site, but I can’t say it was listening.  If not, I may be shimmying under this one at the crack of dawn when bird feeders are filled.  “How low can you go?” We shall see.