Birds Make Good Neighbors

(c) 2009 BMGN . Acacia Tree . Arizona . Spring 2009

Micrathena gracilis is a spider in the family Araneidae, commonly known as the Spined Micrathena. The dark-spotted, whitish abdomen surrounded by 5 pairs of black-tipped spines distinguishes the female of this common woodland spider.

I’ve followed this spider, daily, since July 10th, 2009. I assume it’s a female (the black tipped spines mentioned earlier), as males do not construct webs after attaining sexual maturity. Reading about this particular spider, and not much information is to be found, these spiders are known to be found in woodland and dense forest areas. However, this little lady has taken up residence on our front porch, connecting her web from the porch post to a shrub, which is about four feet from the ground. She’s an orb weaver, which means she re-creates her web daily.

“The female’s web is a small orb, 3.0 – 7.5 inches in diameter, typically three to seven feet above the ground in the understory. The viscid spiral may be vertical or sloped skyward up to 45 degrees off vertical. Webs are found in large open spaces in the shaded understory, where they are exposed to a diversity of flying insect prey. Females rest in the open hub during daylight, sensing vibrations from prey striking the web. They hang head down in the center of the web, with the abdomen horizontal and parallel to the ground. The brown and yellow undersurface of the abdomen faces upward and blends with ground litter and vegetation. The light colored upper surface of the abdomen faces downward and camouflages the spider against the light blotches of the canopy. The orb is renewed daily, but the triangular or rectangular silk frame may persist for days or weeks in the same position. At dusk, the female ingests virtually every strand of the web except frame threads, on which she remains until morning. She rebuilds the orb at dawn.” – Anthropod Museum, University of Arkansas

The webs are selective for prey size, retaining mostly flies larger than 3 mm, even though most insects striking the web are smaller. Females are slow moving and almost clumsy, allowing many insects to escape their webs. Of the insects retained by the web, the spiders elect to attack and consume mostly larger flies. About two-thirds of the prey are flies. Beetles, wasps, bees, ants and other similar insects make up most of the remainder of the diet. Unlike other Araneidae, the spined micrathena bites it prey first, then wraps it in silk.

Every morning when I go outside to feed the birds, I see her. The bird food is stored right next to her web. This morning I didn’t see her and fear she may have been plucked out of her web by a hungry bird. Her weaving was a bit messy when I observed it this morning; hopefully she’s hiding – maybe just had a bad night.

I’ll check on her later tonight or tomorrow.

July 4th, 2009 marks the year anniversary of our house being listed for sale in Knoxville, TN. This is the story of how Frank Goswitz, Knoxville’s Remax, changed our lives.

I posted a similar post, at my (old blog), regarding Remax’s Frank Goswitz back when he was still our real estate agent. This was back in September or October, 2008. He demanded that I remove the post, which I did. We were just glad he knew how we felt about what happened to us. The fact that he found the post and emailed October 16th, 2008, was amazing. He must google his name daily for self-inflation.

He emailed: “Remove your slanderous blog immediately.”

This time, I am not going to remove the post. Two reasons why I am not, maybe three:

1.) Freedom of speech.
2.) People need to know what a dis-honest, lying, uncaring person Frank Goswitz is.
3.) According to the Tennessee Real Estate Commission complaint form, number 3 states:

Please be advised that all information you submit to the TREC will be a matter of public record and as such, subject to disclosure pursuant to the Open Records Law. In Tennessee, the Open Records Law requires that any and all documents received by TREC be made available to anyone who requests such files and/or documents. This includes, without limitation, the news media, respondents, the courts, attorneys and any member of the general public.

This post does not include anything different from the complaint being submitted to the TREC, which grants me permission, and a duty, to post such information on my website and on the internet.

Let’s get started. FYI: This is going to be a pretty long post, being both therapeutic to me and hopefully informative to anyone who reads it.

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