That Time of Year

I haven’t been posting anything because the spiders simply haven’t been around, but with it getting colder up here in Vermont, and the snow beginning to fall, they’re starting to come back to seek out the warmth of the bathroom. Huzzah!

Now if I could only remember where I put my camera…

Well, here’s a very poor quality picture, presumably of Gala, from my phone:

For the record, since the last time I posted it was about her having eggs, I went away for a couple of days, so I missed out on the hatching of her eggs.

Still Time for Spiderlings

Remarkably, while my roommate and I were getting dinner ready and cleaning, I went to grab the mop and did a look-around for where Gala ended up, and I was shocked to find her with an egg sac! Now, I’m not actually sure this is Gala. I’ve never gotten such a good picture (my roommate let me use his new camera, I might have to steal it more often), and I thought I already saw her with some eggs, but I think it’s possible for them to have multiple sets. Heck, since Sabyr already had kids I figured everyone, wherever they were, were probably done.

Guess I was wrong on that.

Last I saw her, she had no eggs, and her back was rounder, so I think it could still be her, just… deflated, for lack of a better word at the moment.

I wonder how long she’s had them? I’ll have to try to keep an eye on her, especially since I lost track of Sabyr’s spiderlings. I think some of them are hanging around the bathroom. There’s some kind of small ones that have been moving here and there, so they’re possibly Sabyr’s kids.

At Least They Guard the Fire Extinguisher

Well I was going to check of trash in the back room and going through this little area is… troublesome. There’s lots of spider webs back here EVERYWHERE so I always have to be careful; watch my head, watch my feet. I looked up though and saw Gala all proud and awesome in a corner, and had to dart off to find my camera. She’s got a buddy with her, no one I recognize. I thought maybe it could be Sabyr, but her back is too fat to be the same. Sabyr was more narrow, even after kids.

The one above I might try to mark. I think it’s large enough that it might be female, so it’ll probably live for awhile. We’ll see if it’s still there later when I’m back from campus.

I wonder if that fire extinguisher even still works… Though y’know, if ever there was a fire, I probably would be too panicked to figure out how to use it quick enough. Well, at least I have spiders to watch over it.

Gala

I’ve probably named several spiders Gala over the years. Pretty much any large female that shows up gets the name; if there’s two, one is Gala, the other is Komta. As far as I’m concerned, Gala’s the ruler of the bathroom. Anyway, hadn’t seen her in awhile. She tends to pop up when I least expect it. She had been up near the ceiling, and when I go into the bathroom, I skim around to see if anything’s changed, or if there’s any of them somewhere that I might step on them or if there’s any silverfish on the floor. She was gone and I couldn’t find her, so I figured she’d skipped town again.

Nope. I find her coasting down a wall in the shower. She should know better! Tsk. So I got a few, mostly unsteady, pictures of her, before slowly leading her back to a non-shower wall.

Some spiders can hide in a nook of the shower and be safe from the water. I figured with her size she might not be as lucky, so I got her out. I later found her in a ceiling corner outside of the bathroom, and now she’s MIA again. I think she was looking for prey in other spiders’ webs before moving on. Who knows.

Recently I had a problem with trash in a closed-off storage room that had numerous fruit flies. After we got it cleaned out, I found several large females. I guess that’s where a lot of them have been hiding. I generally think they move to the cellar when they’re not in the bathroom. There’s not many elsewhere in the apartment. A few here or there, mostly males I think.