freaky spider for Halloween

We got smoked out by the firestorm, and evacuated for a day. But rather than focus on that, here's a bizarre naturalist note:

We have a big spider living in a classic circular web just outside my office window. It only eats bees, sometimes two a day. When it doesn't catch anything, its abdomen shrinks back down to where it looks like a huge tick. After eating a few bees, it balloons up again. Because of the smoke, the bees wouldn't come out, and the spider's web was destroyed by wind. It clung to one of our hanging baskets for a few days to weather out the storm, giving me a chance to finally get a good photo of its top side (which was previously facing the wall):



Oddly, its underside is black with yellow streaks:


After the fire, it had shrunk down to almost nothing and flapped around listlessly for a day or two, and I thought it had starved. But now it seems okay again -- the bees have come out and it caught one already.

Also strange: there were two different types of smaller spiders (both with the same weird habit of holding their legs together in pairs) which tried to mate with it about a month ago, but it hasn't had any eggs that we know of. One photo shows both intruders in the web, plus a closeup of each one. The big female let the tiny spider stay close to her for about two days (obviously a male), but the larger intruder was kept away (and a bit of a mystery).







According to a local spider collector, it's a Mexican orb weaver. Leg spread about 2 inches. Really a spectacular critter. We're glad she survived the fires. Makes me wonder about all the other creatures, great and small, that were wiped out.

Happy Halloween!

Wildfires 10/25/2007

We liked it better when Escondido was in the news for being in the title of that Eric Clapton & J.J.Cale CD a few months ago. Being a plume of smoke, staging area, CNN hot spot, and Presidential photo opp is much less fun. I kept hoping our Governator really did have giant robot friends he could call on, or that there were enough National Guard to um ... guard the nation.

But for 2 days it was essentially a hurricane that was on fire. Nobody could stand in front of the thing and slow it down, and it was too hazardous for choppers to lift off. The few water drops did nothing, since the water never reached the ground. By the time there was a break in the wind, it was 100,000 acres -- more like a few hundred spot fires than one big thing -- but still growing.

Anyway ...

We had an evacuated mom & baby stay with us on Monday, but Tuesday morning the smoke was too much, so we packed up the cats & papers & food stash and got out. By late Tuesday the wind stopped, the smoke columns stood up and we went home ... but there were still fires burning 7 to 20 miles away in every direction.

There were enough mapping tools online that I could keep an eye on the fires and winds, and get a good night's sleep. It calmed down after a few days, but you can tell that everyone around here has a story and a burden, and we try to go through a normal day even though people are conspicuously missing and we're avoiding some areas because they're supposed to be in ruin.

Right now we have a creepy red Halloween moon. I guess kids will be asking for candy in a few days. Never play trick or treat with mother nature.

Nov 1 update: More than a week later we still get a lungful of smoke or ash when we least expect it. And we're expecting another red-flag dry and windy weekend ... (11/1/07)

2024 note: this was the Intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #6, but since that site has been defunct for years, I am folding those into this blog.

 

Long, Bad Weekend in Phoenix

Journal entries about a difficult weekend.  Wacky road trip, one frustration after another.

I had to testify in court about certain family health matters in Phoenix on Monday (today), so ... 6-1/2 hour drive, and I got a ticket for not having a front license plate (which was never a problem before) just 4 miles from the state line. Got whatever sleep I could, not much. Got to the mental hospital, and while waiting to be called someone came in from outside and said, "Whoever has the blue Saturn has a flat tire." My reaction, "The way things are going, that would have to be me."

I went through some emotional hell, came out and had to put on the spare tire (while mental patients came and went). Note that my "look good in court" clothes hadn't been worn in 8 or 10 years, and really didn't fit, but I got the spare on and went back to my hotel to ask for a tire place. At the time, someone was revving their engine right outside the door and cussing and yelling, apparently because they had been told it was a non-smoking hotel and they couldn't deal with it. When the dickhead squealed the tires and drove off (thus proving his dickhead status and nothing else), the nice frazzled hotel lady told me about a Discount Tire place just up the road "in that construction area, can't miss it."

True, you couldn't miss the construction site -- it turned out to be a huge project ripping up the 4 middle lanes of Main Street (Mesa AZ) to put in a light rail system. Over a mile of arrows and warnings and sudden turns to get to businesses that would probably be ruined anyway. At first it didn't look like there was any way to get to the tire shop, then there was. I almost locked the keys in the car when I showed the guy the trick to starting the car (a silly security widget), had to slam the door on my hand at the last moment when I saw he'd left the keys in the ignition. While waiting, I walked over to Subway and bought a sandwich I couldn't eat because my stomach was upset and I had 400 miles to drive ...

Someone's floppy-eared dog squirmed out the half-opened window of their truck and ran around all excited. I got a hold of it and kept it entertained for a few minute while the owners were located. Instead of saying thanks, they just yelled at me, threw the dog in the truck and drove off.

As I told my brother when I got home: the way it was going I was sure I'd get trampled by llamas next, so I didn't make any extra stops. I changed out of my too-tight court pants at a rest area, filled up on cheap Arizona gas (it's 35 cents more in CA due to extra taxes) and somewhere along the line slammed the car door on my other hand for no reason at all. Approaching Quartzite, there was finally a break in the clouds, and huge sunbeams shone down on the town like some biblical scene, except that it was the same old place in the middle of nowhere. Of course I stopped at Chiriaco Summit, the best hangout on the emptiest stretch of the I-10, and got to tell some of the local history to some first time visitors. I snapped some photos of a litter of kittens camped out right under a sign saying "Free Kittens to a Good Home."

No matter how bad the day has been, or how dumb humans are, one can always trust animals to make it okay and simple again.

That's why this issue is a half an hour overdue. It had been sitting on my hard drive since Sep 12, just waiting for an intro, and I found myself living the perfect intro today.

(For people who hate loose ends ... back to that sandwich: by the time I got home 6 hours later it was gone and I vaguely recall finishing it somewhere around Indio during the Billy Joel part of the trip, hoping that no CHP choppers were following me with high-tech food detectors, praying all the salami-sniffing K-9 units were busy on other calls.)

2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #4, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.

Now, about the license plates.  I did eventually go through the hassle and expense of getting new plates for my car.  When I went to put them on the car, and unscrewed the screws on the old back license plate frame, TWO license plates came off the back.  So, I had two licenses plate the whole time.  Argh.

Last note (still 2024): I was able to find the photo I mentioned about the kittens, and it was nothing like I thought it would be in my mind's eye.  Way more cold and industrial, but the kitties were cute.