Halloween is coming & it’s spider season. There seems to be a ton of them everywhere!
Last week @carole.m.hargrave posted a spider️ & I thought of it last night. There was a pretty big spider (when I was a kid we called them “daddy longlegs”) walking around in my bathtub. I cupped him in my hands & put him in a small container on the windowsill while I drew a bath.
I read somewhere there is nothing worse than picking up an indoor spider & putting it outside. ️ It’s like a death sentence! Anyhow, I left the room & when I came back, OMG, the spider was floating in the water! It crawled out of the cup on the windowsill & went back into the bathtub filling with water . Did it have a death wish?! ☠️
I scooped it up & gently set it on a tissue & again left it on the windowsill. I gently blew on it to see if it was alive. ️ (It’s not like you can give a spider CPR!) It seemed drier. I thought I saw a small twitch but I assumed it was a goner. ⚰️ After my bath I checked on it. Still no movement. Blew on it again. Nothing. ♀️
But one thing I noticed—it didn’t look all crunched up like spiders sometimes look when they’re really dead.
The next day I was doing my morning routine & noticed the tissue on the windowsill. The spider was GONE! Yay! I think he made it!
It turns out spiders are around all year but @seaclarridge of the @seattletimes says right now they’re out searching for mates & that’s why we see many more of them.
Do you have a fear of spiders or bugs? ️ . . . NEWS: Today was Sansei Lunch Club. So great to see my 3 long-time friends! ❤️ Also, I’m in the midst of signing & packing books going to Indiegogo supporters of #BloggingOnInstagram. Many have been shipped & few are being hand delivered. Today I dropped off books to Laura, George, Dave & Carol, Doug & Mike O.! More coming! [Book link is in my bio.] . . . PHOTOS from Dave & Carol’s garden: #Autumntrees #japaneseanemone #fallenleaves. And another #bathtubspider! #spidersofinstagram #spiderseason #arachnophobia . . . (at Sand Point) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUzFxUBLX05/?utm_medium=tumblr
I am begging the media to stop making harmless bugs out to be terrifying monsters in their headlines. I’ve seen Joro spiders all over the news lately with these super scary-sounding headlines. Sometimes the truth is buried somewhere in the article, but how many people just read a headline and move on?
So let’s get a few things straight…
1. Parachuting or ballooning is a common method of dispersal used by countless species of spiders, primarily when they are spiderlings and very VERY tiny. They’re not flying, they’re sending out a little parachute of silk that gets caught in the wind. This is, among other things, a way to avoid competing with their siblings for resources. Adults don’t do it, so there will not be giant spiders flying through the sky and landing on your head.
2. Joro spiders are non-native, but so far scientists have no proof of detrimental effects to our native ecosystems. Given the scope of their spread so far, it’s likely they’ll become naturalized and be a new fixture in the US.
3. They aren’t “invading.” They were brought here in 2013 from their native habitat in Asia by human activity, and now they’re thriving because our climate is perfect for them.
4. Joro spiders are not dangerous. Bites may be painful, but their venom is not medically significant, meaning even if you were bitten (unlikely), you would most likely not need medical attention unless you developed an infection.
5. They can get rather big, but we have several native species of spider that are just as large.
6. Joro spiders are orbweavers and prefer weaving their large webs between trees or other vegetation to catch flying prey. They have no reason to come into your house, although they may make webs on or near your home.
Anyway Joro spiders are beautiful let’s admire one
@bogleech is one of the most wholesome writers on the subject of biology. If you don’t know your spiders, this will set you straight and give you a new appreciation for them. Money-back guarantee.
Aw! The gold silk spider we featured there is the same group as the Joro, too, and has nearly everything in common!
My biggest peeve is these articles specifying “venomous” like that’s not just the default for spiders, and also like that’s synonymous with “dangerous” :(
Also people assume all spiders are capable of scurrying and scuttling but these big orb weavers are SO slow and awkward out of their webs, they practically have to drag themselves. It’s like how you might imagine a mermaid gets around on land.
Araneae means an order of arachnids; the spiders. I’ve had this image stuck in my mind for a while. Inspired by old book cover illustrations. >> Instagram
Did you know that the average human being swallows eight spiders per second? You’re probably swallowing one right now. You’ll thank us for the extra protein later.
Magic the Gathering: Green Creatures (Baloths, Bird of Paradise, Giant Spiders) v1.00. D&D 5e Monster Stats
For the green set we have an assortment of big stompy creatures and a little bit of mana producing. When it comes to green I figured the most iconic creature would have been the Wurm, but as Ravnica actually already filled out stats for that, we went for the next best thing… GIANT SPIDERS! As far as I understand the Giant Spider is one of the most reprinted cards in Magic the Gathering. (In this case it’s alternatively called the ‘Huge Spider’ as in D&D the name Giant Spider is already taken for a large sized beast).
Baloths were the choice of big stompy creatures, since I started playing Magic the Gathering arena I found the Vigilant Baloth to be one of my favorites both in use and the artwork. Conveniently enough, Vigilant was actually one of the few abilities from the card game that the ‘Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica’ actually covered. (They’re never surprised, and have double the proficiency bonus to perception. A little more simple than the ability I was designing before I noticed it was already in the book, but it works. I have to learn not to over-complicate all my statblocks when I have an easier option right in front of me.)
Also, we’re almost done with these 5-creature sets. Next, and finally, will be White Mana creatures. Then I can move into the MTG commissions I received (among other projects I have lined up).
The Legend of Zelda: Forest Temple Mini-Dungeon Pack (Deku Baba, Phantom Ganon, Skulltulas, Stalfos) v1.00. D&D 5e Monster Stats
So, for commissions I have started offering a Mini-Dungeon Pack. 6 monster stats for $40. (1 that can be up to Boss complication, 2 that can be Complicated monsters). I wanted to do some more Zelda monsters as an example of what a mini-dungeon pack would be… and it was suggested I do the Forest Temple! So here we have the boss, and some of the monsters, from Ocarina of Time’s Forest Temple!
Phantom Ganon is obviously the boss monster, and his horse is just kinda a bonus (I considered it to just be part of the fight with him and threw it in), plus I added Regional Effects to fill up space. The Stalfos and the Deku Baba would be the complicated creatures (with the second variation of Deku Baba counting as a simple creature since I didn’t have to create new abilities for it, just use the same ones as on the first).
I also don’t consider any Ocarina of Time creatures to be all THAT powerful in terms of D&D stats. So apologies if you feel like Zelda creatures should be higher level, but most of the early ones don’t really have powers that I think would threaten high level player characters.
why do they always show cranberries in thos big pits n its implied its wet and possibly swimmable. do cranberries really grow like that. wh
You’ve never heard of The Bog?
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the what
EACH ADDITION TO THIS POST MAKES MY BLOOD RUN COLD
This is a cranberry bog (unflooded) it’s how cranberries grow. Once they’re ripe, the blog is flooded and the cranberries harvested.
Basically by using big floaty things to round them all up and then scooping them out of the water.
thank u. i hate it a little less but the horrible little man in my head is still screaming “BOG BODY BOG BODY BOG BODY”, but i appreciate the education,
oh here is a fun lil perspective on cranberry harvesting i never heard about anywhere else. the guy who owns the restaurant right down the road from the farm, who fries our chickens sometimes, is from Boston, with the strongest Boston accent ever, and in a former life before he started slinging reasonably priced barbeque and occasional organic chicken, he was a cranberry farmer.
His farm was on the leading edge of kinda using organic/sustainable pest control methods, and one of the things that they did to keep insect damage down was that they encouraged wolf spiders to live in the cranberry field, to eat the bugs.
This was all fine and good until they flooded the bog. Now, you don’t just like flood the bog and then go around it in a boat or whatever. No, you use hip waders to get in there and put the big floaty things where they go and get all the berries and such.
Well when you’re in the bog in hip waders, that makes you the tallest thing. Wolf spiders can swim a bit, but they don’t like it, so they’re, quite understandably, looking to climb out of the water onto a tall thing.
So yeah the first interview question he always asked potential cranberry bog harvester hires was “are you cool with spiders?”
“You’d be amazed,” he said to us, shaking his head a little, “how many guys would just straight lie. Like, you think I’m asking you that question to be cute? Nah man you’re gonna have like a hundred wolf spiders trying to climb your eyebrows, you gotta be chill, those wolf spiders are fellow employees. You really gotta be chill with spiders if you’re gonna work a cranberry harvest.”
happy international workers day to the cranberry bog spiders
I want any cranberry farmers reading this to know, really truly know, that “are you cool with spiders” is not a specific enough question for this situation.
