It’s warming up and the snow is melting everywhere, which means my lawn is exposed and looking hideous, and all the vole trails have been exposed.
It’s nice to think about all those little guys scurrying under the snow pack all winter long.
We have a home Pholcus phalangioides living under our kitchen cupboard, who occasionally emerges when they’ve caught something in their cobweb. In this case, a ladybug, who has been trapped under there for the past day.
The spider is clearly fang deep in a gap under the beetle’s armor, but what adds a frisson of horror to the scene is that the beetle was still alive, it’s mouthparts and forelimbs slowly writhing as Mlle. Pholcus sups on her fluids.
Found lurking in our bedroom, an assassin!
Masked Hunter (Reduvius personatus)
It has been courteously escorted off the premises.
Spotted, growing on a tree about a block from my house: Laetipous, AKA Chicken of the Woods.
It’s not my tree, or I’d be tempted to harvest it and fix it for dinner.
A sperm whale was found munching on a giant squid.
I had no idea it was such a messy meal, but I should have figured that was so — all those tentacles flailing about.
It was easy. Their wings weren’t fully inflated and dried, so they couldn’t escape.
Another one also emerged a few feet away, and there are three more chrysalides around my door.
Something is happening!
My wife spotted this pointy katydid the other day.
It has a wonderful name: the sword-bearing conehead, Neoconocephalus ensiger. Sometimes the taxonomists get it right.
The black widows are growing fast! The juveniles are getting their young stripes.
Only a few weeks old and growing prettier day by day.
