Killing things is a matter of ease really. One pulls a trigger, one thrusts a knife in past resistance, one chokes life out of existence, one ruptures brains through trauma or there are numerous ways to end life, but it is never something pretty like cinema as life expends itself warm and viscous.
I have never enjoyed killing which is a mark which sets me apart from chest thumpers. It is probably why when a dozen years ago a spider appeared in my home, that instead of crushing it, I instead studied it and kept it alive, unlike the common varieties I grew up with and detested to a smashed sole of a shoe.
I bothered to actually finally look up my happy family who has been making webs all over my domicile and they are a large family of common spiders of Pholcus phalangioides.
They call them grand daddy long legs in group, cellar spiders, vibrating spiders etc... and the one above is of my rather large breeding program. I found out several years ago these spiders do bite and they do create a hemorrhage. A group of hatchlings had crawled into my sock and decided to bite me numerous times. After this, they have not touched me for reasons they have apparently worked out.
Often when I type here, one comes to visit me from the ceiling in dropping down or crawling by and I watch them living their lives and soon enough they are gone.
What endeared them to me is they kill other spiders. That fascinated me in being self species predators. They also are the most nurturing of mothers in creating an egg sac which they carry around in their fangs for weeks, and finally they turn it in their fangs biting into it, and the baby spiders are hatched.
I know this as one night while in bed, looking at my gun rack, I observed a mother spider doing just this methodically and by morning dozens of these little creatures as fine as fairies wings appeared.
They are forever in my shower or a cup for water. I frequently have to move them, as they are delicate and die easy. I pick them up and tell them to not be there and all is well when they dry out.
It seems to take about 3 flies or insects once they reach the adult stage to create the abdominal energy to produce an egg sack. They are prolific in non sticky webs, but are quite cocoon in capturing insects which I fully appreciate.
They are quite trophy in their prey. When extras come along they hang them in their web and when finished they drop them to the floor. Flies, lady bugs, centipedes, box elder bugs are all meals, and that is interesting due to the hard shells some have.
I do not know where these spiders came from. Apparently from some packing I had sent for, but they are quite prolific. Apparently after my making them pets my brother decided they were something to covet as he took some home or they hitched a ride, and he has kept them in his home too.
It is amazing to me how sedate they are. As stated, I have not been bitten except for that first series, and have been bitten more by other bugs in mass which are supposed to be harmless.
I kindly took one outside once, and found ants eating it the next morning. For supposedly being ground or cave spiders, they seem to be all in the delicate stage like most Americans in not being able to survive outside.
I really dislike spiders. They belong outside. I was once bitten in bed a dozen times by some damned creature when I rolled over on it. Bites swelled up as half as big as a golf ball, swelled up my lymph gland and I felt like crap.
I do like barn spiders in barns. I do like corn spiders in my garden. I do like my spiders in my corners, cups and shower.
These spiders I have remorse when they die. The others, death comes easy when they are where they are not supposed to be.
agtG
