Turns out, it's a common old "House Centipede" that is quite beneficial and worth keeping around...if you can get over how creepy-gross they look and how freakishly fast they move. The ones we've found are a couple inches long. Ugh. They dwell in the underbelly of your home, protecting you from moths and cockroaches. I'm okay with that...usually.
While taking care of my friends' critters this week, I found a new kind of spider. I'm not a spider lover, so I've tried to learn more about the ones I do find just to take the edge off. It helps to know if a certain spider is out to get you, y'know? And if I know something about a certain bug, I can calm the kids down, too. Alice did eventually learn to identify and tolerate Carpenter Bees. She's also a pro around garden spiders and earwigs, as long as they don't try to touch her. Anyway, here's the new spider:
You know that shuddering feeling you have right now? That can be overcome with exposure and education ;) This is a Venusta Orchard Spider. It lives is semi-wooded areas and makes a mess of a web about 1-foot across. Not harmful to humans. That watermelon-shaped abdomen just seems to shimmer in the sunlight. I thought it was a silver spider, at first. Anyway, it's pretty. And it wants to live outside. I'll let it be.
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I've seen that centipede thingy in my house a few times! It creeps me out. They move SO fast and kind of squiggly, like snakes. I've only seen it (them?) in my kitchen, and they always book it to safety under the refrigerator. I'll try not to be too freaked out now that I know they eat moths and roaches.
ReplyDeleteI want you to know I had a creepy dream about a huge spider and I think it was partly the fault of this post! I read it right before bed. The spider (tarantula size) was on the wall in April Thorpe's house during book club (actual event to take place tonight). I ran to get something to smash it with and while I was gone it grew to the size of a small child. I got back with a woefully inadequate handful of paper towels and the spider kept changing colors (like your silvery spider above) and there was lots of screaming and spider wiggling. I'm pretty sure the dream just ended, as my subconscious didn't have an answer for a spider that big.
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