Lucas the Spider

Please, please, please tell me that y'all know about Lucas the Spider!  If you don't, where have you been?!?!  Lucas is the cutest spider on Youtube and he has various fan club pages on Facebook.

Lucas was created by Joshua Slice and is voiced by his nephew.  Lucas was created after Slice saw a photo of a spider online and he has created a character that is adorable, hoping to challenge fear of all things creepy-crawly.



You can find the videos of Lucas here.

The Dodo has a great clip about the creator of Lucas the spider.


I love Lucas!!

Green lynx spider

Today our Travis County Master Gardener volunteers were working in our demonstration garden to tidy things up.  I always love when they come out as I get to interact with them directly with hands-on teaching moments.  Today, I was not disappointed.  One of them came in to see if I could tell them about a spider she found.  You can look at the title to figure out what it was....

Green lynx spiders are large, bright green spiders with slightly elongated abdomens and spiny legs.  They are usually found on shrubs and low-lying vegetation where they wait for insects to come in so they can ambush them and eat them.  Lynx spiders are generalist predators, which means that they do not specifically eat one type of food item, but a wide variety- generally whatever they can catch.  While they are considered to be beneficial, they will eat pollinators (food is food!).

The spiders that we found were mommas with babies...in this case, spiderlings.  You can see in the photos webbing that encases part of the plant also holds and protects offspring.  The female spider guards her spiderlings until they can fend for themselves. 

Spiderlings remain near the egg sac for a little over a week and then they disperse to new locations by ballooning.  Ballooning is where spiderlings throw up a strand of silk to catch the wind which carries them to a new location.  I hope that I am here when this happens as I found four lynx mommas with babies (that could be about 800 spiderlings!!).

Widow spiders

Information just in time for Halloween where spider webs and spooky spiders are a common sight.

There are four species of widow spiders found in Texas, with the best known being the black widow.  Coloration can vary, but they are typically jet black with two reddish-orange triangles on the underside of the abdomen, forming an hourglass shape.  The triangles sometimes do not touch each other creating a broken hourglass shape.  Males and juveniles are smaller and often are more colorful, with bright markings on their sides or back.

Females lay eggs in an oval sac which can hold from 25 to over 900 eggs.  Depending on temperature and time of year, eggs usually hatch after about 20 days.  Spiderlings stay near the egg sac for several days where they can be seen consuming their brothers and sisters.  The survivors throw a thread of silk to the wind and are carried off in a process called “ballooning”.  They eventually locate a sheltered spot where they build a loosely woven web and remain for the rest of their lives.  As time progresses, the spiders build larger webs to capture larger prey.  Males eventually leave their webs to find females for mating.  In natural settings, most females do not eat males after mating.

Widow spiders do not like being in the open.  They can often be found outside in protected areas such as rainspouts, shrubbery, firewood piles or unused BBQ pits.  It is also possible to find them in garages, cellars, attics, furniture or electric or water meter boxes.  Widows are shy creatures and often people are bitten when a web is accidentally disturbed.

The bite of a black widow sometimes is not noticed, but when it is, it often feels like a pin prick.  The bite location will have two red marks surrounded by redness and swelling.  The bite reaction is systemic and intense pain usually occurs within 1-3 hours and continues for up to 48 hours.  Other symptoms include tremors, nausea, vomiting, leg cramps, abdominal pain, profuse perspiration and rise in blood pressure.  It is also possible for breathing difficulties and unconsciousness to occur.  If bitten by a black widow, immediately seek medical attention.

When working around the house or in the yard, it is best to wear leather gloves to avoid being bitten by venomous arthropods.

Volunteers needed for spider survey!

I'm looking for volunteers to help with a spider survey. This is limited to those in the Austin area.

I want to compare spider diversity in various yards. You can use pesticides (synthetics or natural products) or no pesticides at all. If you usually don't use pesticides and need to for something that pops up, that's okay too as long as it's documented. I just want people doing what they normally do in their yard to put out cardboard strips to survey for spiders. You can do the survey in your veggie garden, your flower bed, a greenhouse, trees in your yard, etc.

I'll provide materials for you to use. You'll be responsible for putting out the items in your yard, collecting samples, documenting any pesticide use and getting samples to me or calling me so I can make arrangements to get the samples from you.

Right now, things are pretty fluid as to a timeline. Once I get enough volunteers lined up, I can nail things down further, but I hope to get started by the end of June and go through summer.

If you're interested in helping out, let me know!

Where have all the garden spiders gone?

I don't know about you, but I'm wondering where all the garden spiders are this year....I miss them! I'm sure that the weather and other environmental factors (that we're in a severe drought leading to less food availability) play into the fact that they seem to be non-existent in my yard this year. Usually, I have tons of these girls around the yard, one of which inevitability builds her web across my back gate so I walk through it when I go into the backyard.

The female garden spiders are easy to recognize with distinct webs. Garden spiders make the large webs with the "zipper" in the center. The spiders are fairly large (other than the males which are much smaller and often not seen) with yellow, black and white coloration.

These are great beneficials to conserve in the backyard habitat and help to cut down on garden pests. Of course, they are generalist predators and will pretty much eat whatever they capture; they don't have our knack for separating "good" bugs from "bad" bugs.

BB's update:

It's been awhile since an update on BB. BB is now 36 weeks along and should be arriving in about 3-4 weeks. Length is now around 20 inches and weight around 5.5-6 pounds. I, personally, am feeling huge and rather cumbersome. Getting up from a chair is becoming difficult and I have to take a break when walking up the stairs at home (ridiculous, I know). There's too much baby and not enough room at the moment, so I'm sort-of looking forward to when BB drops into my pelvis (other than the havoc he/ she will wreak on my poor bladder and the thought of waddling everywhere I go).

Something else I want to share is a picture of my hubby, Alan. He was working in Uvalde this week doing environmental assessments and found a tarantula. Of course, he couldn't leave it alone.....and yes, we're both a bit odd....