Mud Dauber Tube Cache

I bought a storage shed for the camp to keep odds and ends in and while setting up my ladder to do a little caulking I found the nest tube of a mud-dauber securely glued to the top step. I was moving the ladder in order to photograph the single tube when I bumped it on a corner of the shed and broke it open. Inside revealed what the dauber had stored for its future progeny. With a pair of tweezers I began delicately removing one spider after another. I was amazed at how many were crammed in such a small tube. I found 5 different species, 8 spiders in all. They're not dead but in fact paralyzed by the venom of the adult dauber so they'll stay fresh.

If you'll notice in the second picture there is a mud-dauber larva feeding on one of the spiders. Amazing....

Black Widow - Part II

Just when I thought I ridded the inside of the pump house of black widows I find another one with two egg sacs this time on the outside just underneath the overhang of the metal roof. As I approached she scurried into one of the nooks formed by the corrugated roof leaving the egg sacs behind. Her cobweb angles downward towards the ground and doesn't amount to much and is not as intricate as other spiders- kinda shabby looking, but it serves its purpose trapping insects for her. When I tapped the tin roof near the egg sacs she rushed to them with "creepy" speed raising the hackles on my neck. I took photo after photo reminding myself just how close I was to much pain.