Last night’s untimely tempest left the garden marvelously wet and alive this morning so I stepped outside early to take photos before work. Just above my blueberries was this spider, which caught me by surprise and created a blood curdling scream (from me), the kind of scream that shatters anything shatterable. If anyone in the neighborhood was still sleeping beforehand, they certainly weren’t after that.

There are actually two webs side by side with another smaller spider, so after googling “scary striped yellow spider” I was relieved to discover that these are very undeadly garden spiders. Whew.

According to wikipedia, the smaller spidey is the male and the larger (photographed above) of the two is the female. When they do this side-by-side web thing, it means they’re getting ready to mate.

After mating, the female lays her eggs, placing her egg sac into the web. The sac contains between 400 and 1,400 eggs. These eggs hatch in autumn, but the spiderlings overwinter in the sac and emerge during the spring. The egg sac is composed of multiple layers of silk and designed to protect its contents from damage; however, many species of insects have been observed to parasitise the egg sacs.

Aren’t you happy you came to my blog today? Ew. Over a thousand of these creepy crawly things in my garden. Of course, I shouldn’t complain because at least they aren’t deadly.

This ends today’s arachnaphobic Arachnid lesson of the week.

tags: france spiders in france mating rituals