Be afraid, Bob!

This could be you:

https://youtu.be/tunSzrM8LYY?feature=shared

MichaelG.

I abide by the old adage of ”If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive”

At least there are not many spiders, in the UK, that bite us.

Webs of many types are generally useful, so why not cobwebs?

I welcome spiders in my workshop. If you get a dead bluebottle on tools lying on a shelf they really do cause horrible corrosion. The spiders are adept at trapping and wrapping flies and subsequently extract all the fluids as food efficiently defusing the fly.

Spiders just seem to gently desiccate when they die and never seem to create a problem themselves.

regards Martin

There seem to be a lot of spiders around this year. I prefer them to flies and don’t do anything to discourage them.

I have noticed some particularly cheeky spiders have been building web across the mouths of my Sarracenias (an insectiverous pitcher plant). The spiders reside inside the trumpets – I don’t know whether they have a better grip than flies on the slippery surfaces or simply construct safety ropes to prevent themselves becoming the eaten rather than the eater.

Annoyingly, they hid when I tried to take the above photo, but the webs are sort of visible.

Most of them I’ll put up with, but I cannot stand those virtually invisible ones with the tiny bodies and long legs. The ones that strt vibrating wildly if you touch them.

Rob

I used to just leave spider’s webs until I noticed the little piles of spider poo on the floor beneath them. Nowadays I go round every few weeks with the fluff sucker.

Where I live, Mediterranean house geckos are endemic. They eat all sorts of insects, including spiders. They hide under furniture and come out to play (hunt) in the evening.  Much better than spraying insecticide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_house_gecko

Russell

On 11 October 2024 at 15:06 Colin Heseltine Said:

Andy,

Your Sarracenias look very healthy.  I have some but they are not that size.  How do you look after them.  Do you transplant them in to bigger pots as they grow.  If so what compost type mix do you use.

Colin

They’re fairly undemanding but it’s important to remember that they come from wet, very nutrient-poor, boggy environments, hence the need to catch insects to supply those nutrients. Excess nutrients in their water or soil will kill them (reputedly, I’ve never experimented), so the golden rules are:

1) Only use rain- or de-ionised water. The compost should be saturated during the growing period – they like their roots being immersed.

2) Never use any sort of fertiliser.

3) They come from all over N.America and are no strangers to cold weather, and require a cold rest during the winter so best put outside – I’ve found them very hardy and happy to survive hard frosts, just reduce the amount of water to keep the compost damp but not saturated. They’ll die back and look scruffy, but they’ll start growing new traps in the spring and you can trim the old ones off.

4) Because the roots are only there to supply water and hold them in place they don’t need too much in the way of re-potting, only every other year at the most. The roots are quite fragile so they need careful handling. I use compost made for carnivorous plants, e.g.

https://www.hantsflytrap.com/compost-45-c.asp

The ones in the photo are growing in a an old glass washbasin about 400mm in diameter and I put some live sphagnum moss (bought from ebay) on top of the compost to help keep the moisture in, and because it looks good once it gets established.

5) Give them as much light as possible

All the above also applies to Venus Fly Traps (there’s one out of shot in the pic) and Sundews, but note some Sundews aren’t frost tolerant.

The ones shown are about are three years old I think, so they take a little time to get going, and each year you’ll find they’re a bit taller. Compared with other carnivorous plants Sarracenias are definitely the most efficient fly catchers – shining a light through them will reveal numerous fly corpses in the trumpets.

A friend who is a keen amateur naturalist tells me his daughter loves carnivorous plants… to the extent of catching flies to feed the domestic sundews. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll visit to find a “Beware Of The Plants” sign on the gate.

Spiders are different though. She allows them to live, of course – and is good at rescuing the occasional bumble-bee that has gained access to the house but can’t find the way out. She persuades the bee to crawl onto her hand for carrying outside.

I rather like my spiders. Those in the workshop are mainly the gangly long-legged things that prey on other spiders – though I have noticed they will eat insects and even the odd luckless woodlouse most spiders find difficult to deal with.

Plenty of woodlice in my garden, so I have seen Woodlouse Spiders there too – they have evolved jaws capable of piercing the isopod’s carapace plates. They can give you quite a sharp nip too, as I found when I once picked one up indoors to release outdoors.

In UK, normally, we are spared tarantulas, or the Australian lethal equivalents.

Our spiders weave their web as a trap, for food that they can eat (probably would not live long enough to devour completely a human being, anyway)

Unfortunately, their webs are woven without any concern for larger beings.

Some can be irritating, inconvenient, or life threatening, depending on the “victim”

(Witness a bat that I once found, hobbling beacause it could not fly, having become entangled on a proliferation of spiders web. It seemed quite happy to be rid of it!)

Apart from brushing aside webs that impede progress, my policy is let and let live. They probably reduce the population of other species which we do not want.

Howard

What a tangled web we weave. Tim Berners-Lee has a lot to answer for!