Post by Jane on Sept 14, 2021 7:22:37 GMT -7
This summer there have been a lot of Candy Striped spiders in the garden. They are actually quite attractive with white bodies and reddish orange markings. The trouble is they have egg sacs which they attach to a leaf and then guard until the spiderlings hatch. The egg sac is larger than the abdomen of the spider. On several occasions I have lifted the lid of the bin for garden waste only to find one of these spiders making her way up the bin complete with egg sac. Amazingly she has managed to extricate her egg sac from the leaf where she had secured it and made her way up the bin in order to escape. It is quite a display of determined maternal spider behaviour. I haven't had the heart to ignore the situation so I have rescued the spiders and the egg sacs and relocated them back in the hedge.
One day one of these spiders with her egg sac had got to the top rim of the bin and somehow a tiny snail had got entangled with them. The shell of the snail was the same size and colour as the egg sac (pale blue) and the spider must have been confused because she kept going over to the snail and grabbing hold of it with all her legs exactly the same as she was doing with the egg sac. She was going to and fro between the snail and the egg sac. Maybe she thought she had somehow got two egg sacs. The snail was trying to get away but it was attached to the spider by a piece of silk. I managed to free the snail and then rescue the spider and her egg sac.
Jane
One day one of these spiders with her egg sac had got to the top rim of the bin and somehow a tiny snail had got entangled with them. The shell of the snail was the same size and colour as the egg sac (pale blue) and the spider must have been confused because she kept going over to the snail and grabbing hold of it with all her legs exactly the same as she was doing with the egg sac. She was going to and fro between the snail and the egg sac. Maybe she thought she had somehow got two egg sacs. The snail was trying to get away but it was attached to the spider by a piece of silk. I managed to free the snail and then rescue the spider and her egg sac.
Jane
