BOOO! The PUMPKIN SPIDER

Just in time for Halloween

Walking up out of the woods yesterday, late afternoon, the last of the sun found this one golden orb weaver against the sky, hanging across our path, just begging for our attention.

The creature seemed to glow from within in the late-day reds of the setting sun, the better to display its unique personal Rorschach design, sure to confound would-be predators and amaze two-legged wanderers at dusk.

Pumpkin Orb-Weaver Spider late October 2022

And so, this chance sighting pulled the thread of memory, carrying me back almost 20 years, to a day when I put a half dozen living orb weavers into my son’s hand. Yep. That took some convincing! But he trusted me. [This has usually been a reliable thing to do, but not always. He was NOT able to fly by flapping his arms really fast when he was four. Sorry about that.]

I apologize for the image quality from 2004, but back then, only teeny images were compatible with the blog platform of the day.

Below, the living orb-weaver contents of a mud dauber’s clay tubes are exposed—poisoned and already injected with a wasp egg that will metamorphose into a hungry larva surrounded by food.

When the larva pupates, it then will become an immature adult, bore an escape hole through the clay tube (find the escape hole in each chamber of last year’s tubes) and fly off to mate, make more tubes and gather more wasp morsels for the next generation. And life goes on.

Here are the wasp-stung and anesthetized spiders in just one “tube” of a mud dauber’s nest inside the tool shed.

The variable patterns and colors were dazzling

These groggy spiders moved slightly, sluggishly, waiting to be consumed from within...

So when you’re out trunk-or-treating this weekend, be careful walking through the spooky old woods. A juicy pumpkin orb-weaving spider may be waiting, invisible, ready to hitch a ride on your witch’s hat and come inside or crawl down your collar where it’s warm.