Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for November 06, 2012

A spider…in the fall?

I wonder why???

once we had a big yellow garden spider outside our front screen door, when you opened the door she would gather up the web and when it closed she would let it back out, was funny but finally we just stopped using that door so she didn’t have to work so hard. lol She was about the size of a mans thumb nail, her body that is.

Spiders in the fall? Of course! Best time to forage for winter! Just check the webs in the grass, bushes when it’s not frosted, but heavily dewed. And I can never figure out how they can build their webs so damned fast! I just went THROUGH that door! GAK!

Dog!?!?!?! From where did the dog come? I have never seen a dog in this strip before.

The dog believed her.

Been there. Walked out the open garage door one evening and through a huge spider web that hadn’t been there minutes before. Bent over to get said webs out of my hair and equally huge spider slowly rappels off my head to the ground. GAK!!!

Spiders are neat – and they keep other small pests down. I leave them alone in the house unless they are poisonous and entirely alone outside.

In Western Oregon, the spiders hardly even slow down until the January freeze. That’s during the years when it freezes at all. The climate is known as “temperate rainforest.”

Here no spiders are poisonous, so I give them free admission to house, hoping they keep it free of flies and mosquitoes.

But it is indeed annoying to find a web between soap and wall – like I’d never wash…

question- do male spiders spin webs? Aren’t the females usually bigger? I could Google this, but I’d rather ask you.

GAK!!!!

Actually, Our Texas friend is mislead by fear and superstition. Most spiders are so small that they are unable to penetrate the skin of a person. Here in Texas that are only two spiders that can be harmful. The Brown Recluse and the Black Widow. Neither build orb webs and both are easily recognized (although you are more likely to get bitten by a Brown Recluse before you see it). Seeing a Black Widow is not a “Close call”. Spiders that spin orb webs are always safe, will only bite if provoked and can be ignored. Many male orb web spiders spin an occasional web, but most are found lurking near the female,

This reminds me of a scene from Annie Hall where Diane Keaton tells Woody Allen that there is a spider in her bathroom. He kind of scoffs at her and goes in, but then come out and gets a tennis racket. Goes back in and a ruckus occurs. Very funny scene.

I think her mom will believe her now.

@eieio2, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider . Way too much information, but fascinating.

Jan, look what you started. Do you do this on purpose? :y

But not every day. :-)

I had a Tarantula for a pet.She was great and even went to school for a kids class.She was docile as all heck.Her name was Harriet.Chilean Rosehair.Awesome spider.

It’s possible that IndyMan subscribes to GoComics via email, which doesn’t include the header that’s on the website. Although, AFAIK, you do have to go to the website to submit comments.

Get my comics through email and always have the header. Never understood having spiders, etc. for pets. A friend of mine had an aquarium of African Hissing Cockroaches, but he was an entymologist! If the male spiders just lurk around the females, doesn’t that make them more like barflies?