When you come to visit the zoo, one perhaps underestimated benefit is how it can make you look at your environment anew, and come to appreciate nature in unexpected ways. Here is an enchanting story of just such a thing.
Argiope aurantia
She came into my life early this summer, in June, when she chose to build her home on the front wall of ours. Her meticulously woven, elaborate web was a marvel and she tended to it fastidiously, picking out debris, and mending it even if it had the slightest tear. I let her be, and admired her web each time I stepped out. She was a Texas Writing Spider or Argiope aurantia, with the most striking orange and black coloration I’ve ever seen.
For this species, the circular part of a female’s web can measure as much as two feet in diameter. They usually build their webs at elevations of two to eight feet off the ground. My Argiope’s web was truly grand, and bore the signature of her species – the neat and confident zorro-strokes right down the middle. She was very young then, a slim and slender girl with long legs and impeccable taste.
Yellow garden spiders breed once a year. The males roam in search of a female, building a small web near or actually in the female’s web, then court the female by plucking strands on her web. Often, when the male approaches the female, he has a safety drop line ready, in case she attacks him. After mating, the male dies, and is sometimes then eaten by the female.
My Argiope took her time finding a mate, and I checked her web everyday to see if there were any males lurking nearby. She eventually chose a brave young lad who dared to give his life for her attention. This is how I found him one morning, a month later in July.
She was a woman now and eating for two (thousand). She rapidly gained weight and I often saw her eating large insects that she had caught on her pretty web. She extended her web and climbed higher, so that I could photograph her from inside the house, and capture the beauty of her back and the plumpness of her abdomen.
Texas Writing Spiders lay their eggs at night on a sheet of silky material, and then cover them with another layer before wrapping them in a protective camouflage of brownish silk. With their legs they then roll the sheet into a ball with an upturned neck. Egg sacs range from 5/8″ to 1″ in diameter.
One night in August, exactly a month later, after we had turned off all the lights and gone to bed, she spun a small, secure little net under the moonlight and deposited in it her tightly sealed egg sac which held her babies. She secured it snugly to the wall, and stayed by its side for the next couple of days, protecting it and resting.
Once she was sure that her babies were safe, she returned to her web nearby and remained there for another month. One morning in September I didn’t find her at her usual place and got worried. As I searched around, I found her higher up on the same wall, and found another little egg sac by her side. She had secured this one as before, but quite a bit higher, possibly to reduce competition between her babies when they hatched.
Texas writing spiders guard their eggs against predation as long as they can. However, as the weather cools, they become more frail, and die around the time of the first hard frost.
My Argiope stayed with her new egg sac for some days, and then came back down to her original spot in mid-November. As the days grew shorter, the nights turned increasingly cold, and there was soon a string of very cold nights. I kept a close watch on Argiope, and checked her web each morning to see how she was doing. She had built herself a small, messy web near the wall, close to her first batch of eggs. The small web was torn and had a lot of debris on it. I recalled how fastidiously she used to clean her web in her youth, and knew she was losing her strength.
In the third week of November, after a particularly cold and windy Sunday night, I checked on her first thing in the morning, and she was gone. I looked in the bushes and on the ground nearby, but could not find her anywhere. She had spent her entire life on this front wall of our house, so wouldn’t have just wandered away now.
I have grown so used to checking on her as I left the house, and looking for her as I got back, that it has become a habit. I still do it. Only, her web now hangs torn and messy on the front wall. Come Spring, her babies will hatch and find their way in life. I hope one of her daughters will again choose our wall to make her home on, and I will have her company all next summer.
Written by Bindu Viswanathan, Photos by Bindu Viswanathan
Such a beautiful story! How about you? Is there something that you’ve been drawn to observe — or even protect –in nature, whether it was in your back yard, a park or even when you might have been somewhere on a vacation? Please share it with us in the comment section below.
