Spinderella Story con't. and Frog Frenzy

So in she came to live back in her habitat.  She would usually hang out in the cave where she had spun the web mass.  Cut to a couple of weeks later...
     It was about mid-August by this time.  We had some sort of celebration at our home which was the reason for a yellow tablecloth dressing up our kitchen table.  Someone had been checking on Spinderella before we sped out the door for a 4-H activity, and her habitat was left on the kitchen table, which ended up being a blessing in disguise.  We walked in the door  and much to our surprise and shock...there were several tiny moving black dots on the yellow table cloth!  Gotta love the table cloth.  Believe it or not...WE HAD BABY SPIDERS!!!!  No kiddin'.  There were several baby spiders on the tablecloth.  A few had made their way to the door wall which I painstakingly caught with a piece of paper and gently set them outside.  Had we arrived home any later and we might have had a slew of spiders inhabiting our home.  We were weirdly pretty smug about the fact that we actually hatched spiders!  It's a fun story for us to tell and I know folks think we're pretty strange but it's an experience that my kids will remember their whole lives.  I guess you had to be there and only science-y country gals can appreciate the tale.

FROG FRENZY
      Here's another quick similar tale that my boys still talk about 10 years later.  We had a pond behind our former home.  We arrived home after dark one rainy evening in early summer only to be met by a mass invasion of FROGS  on our paved cup-de-sac.  I saw this as another teachable moment, sent the boys up our driveway for buckets and set off to catch frogs.  I drove our van down our little street, dodging frogs of all kinds and sizes, headlights shining bright to illuminate the road and watched the boys with delight as they caught frogs. They were 5 and 7 at the time.   After the catching frenzy we put a board over the buckets and went off to bed.  Cut to the next morning...we unveiled the buckets and peered in with wonder.  One by one we took out each frog, observed them and let them go.  There were several kinds and every size imaginable.  They had caught 60some frogs in about 15 minutes.  They neighbors thought I was nuts, the boys thought I was the coolest mom ever.  It was an experience we'll always remember.

Picture Of The Week

                                                                 Lovely Bounty

Chapter 2 "A Spider Tale" - Crazy Country Living

So, now we have this "pet" spider - very large, black, hairy, spider.  After consulting with Ms. Google, I found that people actually do keep these darlings as pets, so perhaps we are not that kooky,   he hum.
    Well, we kept said spider for several weeks snatching bugs to keep her on the hunt.  This cool little habitat has this little cave like structure in one corner that she eventually grew very fond of.  Before we knew it she had built this web/nest inside there and she would hang out there for the day. They do not build the typical lacy web like most spiders do.  They have this small thick tangled mass of webbing.  Well, she holed up in there for weeks.  We never saw her poke her head out or come hunting the nice juicy insects that we painstakingly  caught for her.  After two or three weeks of her being AWOL we figured she went up to spidey  heaven.  We figured it was time to open the habitat outdoors and let her out(if she was still alive) and if not it was just time to get the habitat outside.  With no pouncing show to watch she had lost her charm.  So out she went in mid July.  The habitat was stationed by our deck just in case something started happening.
     Two weeks went by.  I was headed out the back door, toward the deck, and who was there to greet me but "Spinderella".  That is what my then 9 year old son named her.  She was sitting on our back steps literally saying "Hey, I've missed you and I want to live in my habitat in your house".  I understand spider-speak.  I made the assumption that it was our Spinderella so I scooped her up, gathered up the habitat and went on a hunt for feeder flies.

To be continued.........