If you compare this photo to yesterdays, you can see that yesterday the embryos were in the process of molting, with the prosoma free and the abdomen and legs still trapped in the old cuticle. Today the legs are free and the old cuticle is a shriveled white mass at the end of the abdomen.

We have lots of healthy looking babies from this clutch, which worries me…we’ve got three more egg cases that will probably hatch out this week, and we’re going to be swimming in baby spiders. I’m going to need a lot more flies, I think.

Here’s a closer look at its cute l’il baby face.

There was some concern about a clutch of embryos that I accidentally removed from the egg sac prematurely. I was worried that they wouldn’t develop properly. Well, concerns allayed. They’re busy making legs just fine.

One catch, though, that I discovered to my horror. There’s a reason for that protective silk egg sac: at this age they’re just a delicate membrane over a ball of fluids, and they rupture at the slightest touch. I’m going to have to leave them alone until they’re tough enough to walk about on their own.

I’m back! I have to say that, after drinking margaritas with Iris, the next best part was the spider tour, and in particular this one place, the Thompson Hill Information Center and Rest Area, which was magical.

I had a good feeling when I saw all the plants growing up right next to the building, and I was right. I went to the left behind the shrubbery and there in the corner, I saw this:

All those dark dots running down the center? Spiders. All Parasteatoda. I counted 9 in just this one little strip, and there were more and more all around the building, and then there were multiple picnic shelters that were home to many more. It was a spider bonanza!

Want to see a few? Look below the fold.

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I’ve been making a pest of myself on iNaturalist the past few months, throwing in photographs of spiders with my wild, poorly-informed guesses about their identity (I’m a total newb in this business, just an enthusiastic newb), and someone took pity on me and recommended another field guide I can use, specific to this region. It’s Spiders of the North Woods by Larry Weber, and I ordered it on the spot. Yay! I look forward to being slightly less annoying to the real arachnologists!

It won’t be here until Monday, though, and today we’re driving from Duluth back to Morris, and I’ll keep on poking my face into spider webs on the way.

Today was a glorious day for a road trip from Morris to Duluth. I told Mary that we should take it slow and easy.

“It’ll be a relaxing, low pressure trip,” I said.

“We’ll make frequent stops,” I said.

“We’ll stop now and then and go for walks to stretch our legs,” I said.

“It’ll be fun!” I said.

“We’ll look for spiders,” I quietly said.

And we did. The first half of the drive was a little disappointing, because it was unpleasantly hot, and spiders are wise and lay their trappy little webs and retire to the coolth under an overhang or in a small crack. We saw spider sign, but not much else. The one exception was this subtle little lady who was quietly lurking under a handrail with her babies at the Big Spunk rest area.

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Mary keeps finding spiders for me, and she brought me this lovely Parasteatoda this afternoon. She was remarkably active and was just skittering around in the vial, and she was so plump and pretty and vivacious that I had to give her a bigger cage of her own in the lab, and within seconds of being placed on the frame she was building a big new web — you can see a bit of it stretched between her toes.

I named her Shae. The colony is getting quite large now.

Yesterday, I showed you that clutch of spider eggs I’d accidentally removed from their silken egg sac. This morning I checked on them, looked into the incubator, and saw they were still resting there in a tight little ball, but when I picked up the vial, they disappeared. The coherent ball of eggs fell apart, and all the individuals went tumbling down, like little beige pearly ball bearings, and they’re rolling around on the floor of their container.

I don’t consider this a good sign — it means that they initially had some adhesive properties and that they’re drying out. Mama Spider puts a drop of mystery fluid in the egg sac as she’s laying eggs, and it’s not clear what that does for them. These eggs may be doomed. I spritzed some water vapor into the vial and also dampened the foam plug to get the humidity up, but we’ll see. I’ll be keeping an eye on them.

P.S. They’re not like chicken eggs, where a fall from 20 egg diameters up is going to crack them all. There are some privileges to being tiny.

Beautiful.

We’re currently cultivating 3 spider egg cases in the lab, with several more imminent, we think. This morning, I separated them from their mommies so I could put them in a temperature controlled incubator. I was delicate about it — not actually touching the sac itself, but tugging on the strands of silk holding them onto the web, and transferring them to clean vials. This one was a miracle, because without even trying I had accidentally and neatly removed the silken wrappings of the case. I don’t know if this is good or bad, since it might affect their development, but I guess we’ll find out.

These eggs were laid two days ago. Now we just watch them to see what happens next.

Also, don’t tell anyone else, but despite our care in maintaining all spiders in vials with a foam plug, or a larger container with closed lids, somehow babies are escaping, and we keep finding bits of the lab covered in webbing. Today it was the door to the incubator and the timed light. We caught the culprit for that — it was a tiny theridiidid spiderling who had built an elaborate web. We fed him as a reward.

I’m still hoping to walk in one day and find the entire lab cocooned in spider silk. My colleagues are probably not as eager as I am.