April 2016 ~ Well this is what we get for leaving town. A surprise: hatching spiders! On my shoe! This past winter, we didn’t have many opportunities to make our daily walk around the lake, then we were out of the country for almost two months. A little spider took advantage of the lull in activity and set up housekeeping on one of the soles. This morning, when I got my walking shoes out for a walk around the lake, I found a spider nursery:
I pulled out another pair of shoes for the walk and left these out in the garden; by the time we returned, all the spiderlets had dispersed. Consulting my favorite bug identification site, Bugguide, my best guess is Metazygia wittfeldae. I don’t know if this species likes the garden, but better there than in the mud room (in my opinion, anyway.)
Here is a little video:





