h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's jumping season again There's one jumping all over my coffee table right now and another dangling by a thread off my monitor.

Bless

When I find wolf spiders wandering the hallways here at work, I no longer ferry them outside as I've recently been informed that taking "house" spiders outside isn't doing them favors. Instead, I now take them into my rooms where they'll be safe from stomping feet. I've got one room in particular that is basically just storage now.

Spiders in my home get pretty much free reign as long as they can avoid my half blind cat.

Dewey and Flossie had plenty of fun with 'em

"They could have been there all weekend, who knows? It's a disgrace, it's like something out of a film" http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-32215206 Hatton Garden raid: Seventy boxes opened in jewel heist

I really must watch Loophole again. It's one of my favourite films
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chMhMXYxGag

Or has someone else been watching it recently?

Sounds like the basis for a new crime caper movie...

Who should star?

Michael Caine is a bit old.

Wasn't there an episode of the Sweeney with the villains tunnelling in and mucking about with alarms?

Contact Breaker, from series 1, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0714426/?ref_=ttep_ep12 with Warren Clarke comes to mind.

Roy Clarke has been a fantastic sitcom writer over the years. He (on his own with no-one else with him) wrote (amongst many, many other series and one-offs) all 295 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine, all 44 episodes of Keeping Up Appearances, and all 44 episodes of Open All Hours, including this little gem, from the last episode of series four:

Granville: You've got great legs.
Julie: Oh, do you think so?
Granville: Oh aye, I've always thought you had great legs, always thought Julie has got great legs.
Julie: What, er, both of them?

But it's the line that follows that provides the punchline. Perhaps it was unintended and unnoticed by Roy Clarke, perhaps he slipped it in (ooer missus) and the BBC censor missed it, perhaps the audience didn't get it (because there's hardly a titter), perhaps the person adding the canned laughter thought it best not to draw attention to it. Either way, it's straight out of a Carry On film...

Granville: Oh aye. There's nothing to choose between them.

26 episodes of Open All Hours

Every time I read his name before some classic Britcom I still can't help but think of this "picker" and his fabulous sideburns.

http://youtu.be/4gw0fxuIvBM

Going back a few days are we talking about the same type of wolf spiders? Almost hand-sized (I have small hands, but not THAT small) tarantula looking things with big scary, hairy legs? Cos there is no way on this shiny Earth that one of them will get in my house without me doing all in my power to get the nasty thing outside!! I have spiders everywhere, I can vacuum every day in all nooks and crannies to get rid of the tiny ones with big legs who just replicate ad finitum - I don't mind them - but them there wolf spiders....NO, just NO!

The spiders I was talking about are tiny and funny and... I don't normally care to use this word about *anything* (or anyone), much less about spiders, but they're just plain cute

Didn't you post a link to a video of one of them doing a strange little dance a while back, BG? Do you still have that link?

Well, apparently the wolf spiders I mentioned are actually two different species. On this page you'll see Grass Spiders and Carolina Wolf Spiders look fairly similar. Maybe I'll put them outside after.

http://www.spiders.us/species/filter/texas/

You can also find various jumpers on this page.


And here's that tiny dancer.

http://youtu.be/d_yYC5r8xMI

And an Elton John reference too. Well played

I've always liked the black and yellow garden spider, also called the ornate garden spider, though they do sometimes spin their web across a path, in which case, after the manner of Morticia Addams, one can detach it on one side, reanchor in a more convenient location and they'll usually accept the correction.

If not, the spider may need to be relocated.

They're outdoor spiders that are efficient at keeping down pest insects and of course, they're pretty, in the colors of the tiger swallowtail butterfly.

They use their legs in opposable pairs, the forward two pairs for manipulating their octagonal (orb) web and things in it, the hind two pairs for anchoring themselves, holding on to their web or whatever, kind of like a little 8 fingered hand with the body in the middle.

Their egg case is of an extremely coarse and strong and stiff brown silk, roughly oval, filaments about half a millimeter in diameter, the entire egg case about 10cm x 4.5cm x 1.25cm and so stiff it will support its own weight held between thumb and fore finger by one end, ;an entirely different grade of silk than that used to spin their webs, which is typical in size for the general run of orb spiders.




I've always liked the smaller and shorter legged jumping spiders for indoor spiders, they don't spin conspicuous webs, are very adept at staying out of harm's way and staying out of trouble and are actually rather biddable and cooperative, usually spend most of their time hanging around on the ceiling.

As team players, though they won't tolerate others of their own kind in their territory, they seem to regard human beings as part of their team.

Pheromonally, they remind me of ant lions.




Once, in my late teens, we had a colony of wolf spiders, or grass spiders, that completely carpeted a bed of ivy on the north side of the house with their webs and left them in place for fly abatement.

They're very social and so long as their food supply is adequate and they have adequate room for their individual webs, they tolerate others of their own kind.

There's another spider in the same group as the grass spider or wolf spider with an elongated yellow abdomen, called a bananna spider.




I usually tolerate the daddy-long-legs or cellar spider unless they get in the way of something.

Among other things, they prey on black widows.




I've always considered the crab spiders fascinating for their chameleon like color change ability.

They're global in their distribution and had their most recent population climax simulataneously in California, the UK and Spain.




The dancing peacock spider with its little smiley face, doing its nuptial dance, with another spider, less ornate, of presumably the opposite sex appearing momentarily in the finale, was stunning.

Do you know which gender it was?

This one, by the by, though enormously more ornate, is in the same superfamily as the short legged jumping spider I remarked on above.

The extended length of the third pair of legs is a characteristic of the jumping spiders generally, which often also have claws on their front pair of legs.

Spiders are lovely creatures - I really enjoyed that dancing spider clip, by the way.

Although I live in a far less exciting area as far as arachnids are concerned, I have one tiny one that always descends to my desk at work once the skylight above it is opened. We used to call these "money spiders". No idea why.

And at present, hiding in our letter box, is a furry, cuddly one .

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why all humans are supposed to inherently feel disgust at the sight of them. As a child, I was fascinated by spiders, moths and bats.

All spiders are venomous.

Most are not dangerous to most people.

Even where there is not a serious venom hazard, there's still an allergy hazard.

Finally, probably most important of all, spiders are usually pheromonally unpleasant, same principle as peop!e who might be delighted if a butterfly landed on them one would probably find the same experience with a moth unpleasant, same principle as a cockroach that's made accidental contact with a human being usually goes into a paroxysm of cleaning behavior.

Unpleasant pheromones, only barely if at all perceptible to the sense of smell help to keep a host of creatures out of trouble.




Myself, I won't unnecessarily handle any kind of wild creature.

Even if there's no very great hazard to myself, especially with smaller creatures, they're usually at considerable risk of injury.

TC, I read an article just a few days ago that tries to explain our ancestral arachniphobia.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-are-we-afraid-spiders

Lattice O' Coincidence©


ITIWBS, the yellow and black spiders we find making large, strong webs in our back yards and across paths along the gulf coast are NOT pretty.

Giant Golden Silk Orb Weaver Spider in Florida (Part I): http://youtu.be/7RXyYzjzZvs

However they are mostly harmless. As you mentioned, all spiders are venomous, but many, if not most, won't or can't bite humans. I've never heard of anyone being bit by one of these (also called banana spiders locally). However, if you walk into one of their webs unexpectedly (how else would you?) you're apt to run away, screaming in a frenzy and brain yourself on the nearest tree.

I know from experience. The most memorable was the time I got a face full of web while operating a riding lawn mower. While I knew the spider was harmless and I have hit their webs many times before, what made me leap off the still running mower, run across the yard screaming and flailing, was the realization that this was the time of year when these spiders often are covered in thousands of their offspring. My mind couldn't handle this knowledge. The mower meanwhile was humping our chainlink fence and digging two wheel ruts in our yard.

If any neighbors were watching, they wouldn't have seen the spider web and would have just assumed the Ingram kid just lost his ever-loving mind, bless his heart*.






*usage: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bless+your+heart

The ornate garden spider I'm best acquainted is the somewhat rounder bodied California type, still in the same genus as the gulf states type, which usually prefers a boggy or at least well shaded and watered terrain.

As I remarked I wouldn't want to come into contact with one myself.




On objectionable characteristics, many people describe them as 'slimy'.

They are if one swats it.

I hate getting up late (anything after 8am is late as far as I'm concerned).

It was 10.30 this morning. Well, I had been up for 32 hours the previous day(s), worked 14 hours and then poured beer at a brewery party for four more hours.

I still don't like it though. It's nearly 5pm on the first day I've had off in more than week (there's no second one tomorrow btw) and I haven't done a thing except buy some food I'm too tired to cook.

I'm to bloody old for this.