Spider Dos: Not ready to die – Part I

[This is a continuation of the article posted around mid-day on 8 October. You might want to read that first. The events described below – hard to believe – are true and took place later, between five and ten o-clock p.m. that same day.]

It was another hot, humid afternoon in South Central Texas. I went outside to see how Dos (AKA Pig Pen) was doing.

The morning’s greeting wasn’t good. I had never before seen her where she didn’t have a web. She was hanging by a single filament.

It was eerie; the whole scene had a feeling of doom.

As I approached I saw that a locust had attached itself to one of the spider’s three egg sacks. There’s no way a fit and healthy Dos would have let that happen. She would have been all over that predator in an instant, wrapping it defenseless.

The fact that the bug was comfortable glomming onto a sack (I did flick it off) seemed like a sign that it, too, detected there was something wrong with her.

She just kept hanging listless by that one thread. It reminded me of a human body that had just been hanged with the head resting its chin on chest.

Instinctively my mind went to the unpleasant reality that this was the end of her one-year life. I had just yesterday re-read the article that stated the standard lifespan for her type of spider was 12 months (although in warm climates her species can reportedly live longer).

This part of Texas is nothing if not warm.

I went back inside to get a stool to sit on. My shack took on the feel of a hospice.

The sun was still very hot although it was now late afternoon.

Maybe she was already dead? She remained motionless with her legs absent of the natural tension separating them.

I instinctively reacted to this potential demise similarly as I would with a human.

Carefully I neared her body and blew a gentle breath to move her. She twitched slightly!

Holy cow! But was that simply the force of my air?

Again I gave a poof and for an instant she squirmed her eight legs.

My mind’s voice asked, ‘What the hell goes on here? A grown man doing CPR on a spider? Are you crazy?’

I guess so, because I repeated this on and off for a couple of minutes; each time she reacted more forcefully as if she were annoyed. “Leave me alone,” was the body language.

To add to her being vexed I began clapping my hands loudly and yelling: “Get up there and put that web back. God didn’t make you to hang around here. You’re not gonna die.”

By this time her squirming – and lack of energy – caused her to free fall on the de-facto rope about a foot. She rested herself at a bend in the metal siding as if to gather strength; she had now descended to about three feet off the ground.

I waited to give her time to collect herself and her jumble of eight legs.

Was she going to slide to the grass and die, or come out fighting?

Obnoxiously I began more of the same – whooing her, clapping and yelling – but this time I directed my nudging from below to encourage climbing and not sliding back.

The voice came at me again: “Man, this is working. Keep at it.”

After a few more minutes she had regained the lost distance and more.

As twilight neared, I retreated inside to begin making dinner. My Rx seemed to be succeeding so far.

Over the next hour she settled in at about seven feet high; just about normal, but still without any web. She remained tethered to a single hair-like strand.

Still incredulous, I stepped back and gave thought to what this spider and I had just accomplished.

What triggers a spider to die? How to die? Where to die? Spider Uno simply up and left. Dos was seemingly going to give up and hang there until she was no more.

Can a human intervene and prolong a spider’s life?

• End Part I of II   –