The Not-So-Itsy-Bitsy-Spider

I was racing through the tall grass last week when I came face to face with a monster.  About three inches long from the tips of the front to the back legs, an enormous spider was bouncing up and down on its huge web, right in front of my snout.  I came to an abrupt halt and sat back on my haunches.  Was it dangerous?

As it turns out, no.  The spider was a female common garden spider, or Argiope aurantia (the arachnid's scientific, or Latin, name).  They are also commonly called "black and yellow" spiders, for perhaps obvious reasons, and "writing" spiders, because of the irregular patterns in their webs.  These spiders may have been the inspiration for Charlotte, of "Charlotte's Web" fame.

Garden spiders spin large, circular webs, often exceeding two feet in diameter!  Unless the web is irreparably damaged, the spider will maintain a single web for the duration of the season, making repairs as necessary.

The spider will hang, head down, in the center of the web and wait for its prey to become entangled in the silken strands.  When I saw this spider bouncing on her web, she may have been trying to scare me off, which she certainly did!  Or, she may have been trying to make herself harder to see, in case I was considering eating her for lunch... which I certainly was not!  The cat ate a spider once and he was sick for a whole day.  Yuck!

These spiders eat insects, and are considered harmless to both people and dogs.  In fact, they are beneficial to have around the yard, as they will eat the mosquitoes and other pesky biting insects that harass us during the summer months.

This time of year, the female spider will create and protect an egg sac, which will contain up to 1000 individual spider eggs.  She will guard it until her death, around the time of the first hard frost.  However, just like in "Charlotte's Web", her tiny young will emerge in the spring and will carry on where she left off.  They will send up a string of silk, which catch on the spring breeze and carry the young spiders into gardens around Des Moines.

Can you find a garden spider, before the first frost?  Send in your garden spider photos with your comments, and have fun!

Nuts about Fall!

Being a dog gives me a different perspective on nature than that of most people.  Some of that has to do with the fact that my face is lower to the ground.  I see what is happening on the very surface of the earth, both with my eyes and with my nose.

Over the past week or so, I've noticed one of the very first signs of fall, right in front of my sensitive snout!  Suddenly, the ground in our parks is covered with a variety of nuts.  To be honest, the real reason I noticed this phenomenon was that the squirrels, those wily little taunters of dogs, have been spending more time on the ground lately.  Had they developed a new way to tease me, or was something else going on?  When I investigated this important question, I figured out that they were harvesting the fallen nuts of trees.

Photo by Cameron Sadeghpour

You probably know that nuts are the fruit and seeds of nut-bearing trees.  The most common nut-bearing trees in our Des Moines city parks are walnuts and oak trees.  The walnut trees we have here in Iowa are black walnuts, which have a much stronger flavor than the walnuts you find in the grocery store (English walnuts). 

As you can see in the photo, the ripe walnuts are covered with a thick, lime green husk.  This husk contains tannins that have traditionally been used to make ink, hair and leather dyes, and wood stains.  If you want to harvest these walnuts for a snack, you will need to remove this husk while it is still green.  This can be a very difficult and messy process, but is worth it!  Here is a website that will tell you how to go about hulling, curing, and cracking your black walnut harvest:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/ygbriefs/h404blkwal.html

Acorns are the fruit and seeds of oak trees.  Our state tree is the bur oak, a member of the white oak family.  You can identify bur oak acorns by the "furry", or fringed, cap.  It takes a bur oak tree up to ten years before it produces its first acorn.  However, when the tree reaches maturity, it can produce up to 5,000 acorns in a single season! 

These nutritious nuts don't taste good to dogs or people, but they are an important source of high-calorie fall foods for squirrels, many birds, and insects.  Take it from me... if you want to see a lot of wildlife activity, sit quietly near a bur oak tree and watch the animals enjoy the acorn buffet!

Get outside sometime this week and photograph the fruits of our native tree's labors.  Send them in along with your comments on the early signs of fall you have been observing this season.  Have fun!

Photo by Cameron Sadeghpour