That’s right, #Arachtober is a thing with swarms of people posting photos of their fave spiders this month. It doesn’t seem quite right to me, because October is a sad month for spiders in Minnesota — I’m seeing them fading away as the weather cools and their prey declines and we approach the terrible frost and frigid winter. Here’s Jenny By-The-Front-Door, for instance.
I’ve been checking on her every day. She’s not very active; she’s huddled in her nest cobbled out of dead leaves and debris, and I can see her legs peeking out, and if I poke at the nest with my finger, she’ll slowly wave at me, but she’s nowhere near as busy as the spiders are in the warm summer months. I expect that one of these days I’ll give her a little poke and she won’t respond. She’ll either be in diapause or dead.
I still have lots of thriving spiders in the climate controlled environment of my lab, at least!
I don’t recall any spiders playing a significant — or indeed, any — role in Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October, generally confirming October isn’t spidermonth. On the other hand, one of the local organic veggie shops this morning could do with some spiders — it had a (fruit?) fly problem — which I also suppose confirms October isn’t spidermonth.
(And I just swallowed a large shot of what I, for some reason, thought was apple juice. It wasn’t. it was a (rather nice) Japanese whisky — one sips whisky, not down a full large shot of the stuff — so my throat is on fire and ys tpying iss begomingg erqticererereerrrr…… (this has nothing to doo which spidderss – eYe thhhjnk)).))!