Joann Merritt's Essays

A Midnat Spin-Off
October, 1987

Until this summer my only interest in spiders was keeping their webs out of my house so my 6’3” son-in-law could walk through without getting bound up like an insect. Now I want to know the name of the spider - Barn, Jumping, Wolf or (Heaven forbid!) Brown Recluse - and what kind of web it spins - blanket, orb, funnel?

Information in this tale I will spin was obtained from Charlie Anderson’s “Good ol’ Boy School,” Allen’s scientific approach and my own observations and reading.

A Banded Argiope is a large spider, approximately 1” long. Her 8 legs are banded black & tan for more than half their length from her body. Her abdomen underneath is black with scattered small white dots and two heavy yellowish stripes. The upper side is silvery white with dark lines and curves.

In July an Argiope spun her web at the back of our house. A couple of weeks later the much smaller male spun his web nearby where he waited patiently. Eventually he was accepted into her web. Mrs. Argiope evidently does not agree with Frances’ premise that we marry our husbands for better or worse but not for lunch because she definitely had him for lunch! She later attached one sac of eggs between a vinca leaf and the house, and another to the window frame, then a third on the outside wall thermometer sensor. Even as I write this she has another prospect for lunch.

She rests head down at the center of her large orb web and if an insect gets caught she rushes to her prey, quickly wraps it in thick strands of webbing and instantly paralyzes the victim with her poisonous bite. If she is not hungry, she saves the meal until later. She sucks the body fluids from the insect, breaks the web to let the victim’s body drop, then repairs her web. We caught grasshoppers and tossed them in her web to watch this behavior. According to World Book, the spider coats its own legs with an oily substance from its mouth so that it can pass over the sticky web without becoming trapped.

When she senses danger she bounces her web like a trampoline. This is a camouflage tactic. Wasps are enemies and if she is moving she is not an easy target. There is a heavy zig-zag mark in her web, hence the common name of Signature Spider. The female always spins the signature.

It’s just as well Little Miss Muffett didn’t visit us this summer for she would not have had a good time. However, we now have a large reddish-brown spider who runs and hides when he sees us, so we might have to rewrite the nursery rhyme.

P. S. Late the next spring the sacs of eggs hatched, a thousand at least! They stayed close for a few days and then they all disappeared.