I’ve been at war with some very aggressive chipmunks this spring. In order to keep any of my potted plants alive I’ve had to cover them in copious amounts of chicken wire, hardware cloth and deer fencing. It looks ridiculous, but nature has already adapted. Over the weekend I discovered two batches of baby garden spiders using that makeshift fencing to string their webbing:
Garden spiders are harmless, but very large (males grow 3/4″ long and females 1.5″). They spin large webs—up to 2 feet across—to catch their prey. Each night they eat that web and spin a new one.
Even if you hate spiders, you might just find the tiny black-and-yellow babies irresistible:
The babies spin their webbing in an open location and then wait for the breeze to pick up so they can launch themselves into the wind like tiny kites.
What is absolutely remarkable about these little spiderlings is that they hatched LAST FALL. Female garden spiders lay their eggs in fall and die shortly thereafter. The babies hatch but spend winter in their egg sacs. I’m surprised anything survived the winter we just had, much less teeny tiny spiders.
I discovered the spiderlings in the late afternoon. By dusk half of them had already “taken flight” and disappeared. By the next morning they were all gone.