Wolf Spider
Oct. 9th, 2011 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
citrakayahI’m walking through leaf brush at night, not caring if I make noise because it startles the crickets into jumping. The sound they make as they spring is loud, loud enough so that it sounds as if something much heavier is jumping. I think frogs, but I can’t find any, and there couldn’t be so many frogs.
My eyes are, of course, nearsighted, but they are sensative enough to relatively little light to pick up a shape at my foot. I crouch. It is a spider, at least two inches long. The shape and relatively nomadic behavior suggest wolf spider, but most wolf spiders I see are dwarfs compared to this giant. In tropical places, I have seen tarantulas. This spider is nearly as big as one. I don’t know much about spider growth patterns, but I know that they aren’t apex predators, and that they reach sexual maturity at a very small size. Either this is a different species- definitely a possibility, but I think I know all the spiders of my state- or this is a very, very old spider.
I try to get it to crawl on my foot. When this doesn’t work, I try to pick it up with two sticks. This, of course, fails. I let the arachnid go. I have other things to do.
Disclaimer: After reading the Animal Dialogues, I thought I'd try writing something in the same general style. This is the result.
My eyes are, of course, nearsighted, but they are sensative enough to relatively little light to pick up a shape at my foot. I crouch. It is a spider, at least two inches long. The shape and relatively nomadic behavior suggest wolf spider, but most wolf spiders I see are dwarfs compared to this giant. In tropical places, I have seen tarantulas. This spider is nearly as big as one. I don’t know much about spider growth patterns, but I know that they aren’t apex predators, and that they reach sexual maturity at a very small size. Either this is a different species- definitely a possibility, but I think I know all the spiders of my state- or this is a very, very old spider.
I try to get it to crawl on my foot. When this doesn’t work, I try to pick it up with two sticks. This, of course, fails. I let the arachnid go. I have other things to do.
Disclaimer: After reading the Animal Dialogues, I thought I'd try writing something in the same general style. This is the result.
