My father has various piles of junk in the back yard he's too busy to take care of, so often they get infested with various pests. A pile of cardboard boxes was overrun by a colony of termites which we got rid of, and now I suspect a roll of old carpet has a bee hive forming inside. It's not large enough on the inside to form anything too large so I'm not afraid of those crazy bees living in the walls scenarios. But it is very close to the house and I would rather not risk eventually ticking them off.
My father would never pay for bee removal services for this above $100, so I want a way of coaxing them away from this small shelter.
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
Fire usually works.
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
He is also like a honey badger in that he doesn't give a fuck and will probably just pick up that roll of carpet and toss it in front of the house for the junk collectors to deal with
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
My father has various piles of junk in the back yard he's too busy to take care of, so often they get infested with various pests. A pile of cardboard boxes was overrun by a colony of termites which we got rid of, and now I suspect a roll of old carpet has a bee hive forming inside. It's not large enough on the inside to form anything too large so I'm not afraid of those crazy bees living in the walls scenarios. But it is very close to the house and I would rather not risk eventually ticking them off.
My father would never pay for bee removal services for this above $100, so I want a way of coaxing them away from this small shelter.
One of my best friend's new guy pal breeds a few kinds of arthropods. I got to hold a monster horned hissing cockroach!
I mean I don't have any issues with most animals, but I was kind of worried about a creature that large being able to bite, albiet in defense. He said it wasn't an issue, dropped the monster in my hand, and I was instantly okay with it. I think it was the weight; other than the occasional shifting of the leg it felt like those semi-realistic rubber/plastic toys a lot of us had as kids. And they were kinda cute just hissing at everything like a grumpy old man.
He also had quite a collection of sow bugs and pill bugs (which I just learned are genus Armadillidium which is fantanstic). Like, pumpkin orange ones that still aren't mature. And he's breeding native Armadillidium to try and develop the yellow.
OHOHOH and he has a small brood of native cockroaches, ~1" when mature, that are very unique because they still harbor protists, like termites do, to digest cellulose. The trippy thing is that this particular species will raise a clutch of young for 2 years until they are mature, nursing them with a rudimentary 'milk' that also contains the protists.
Arthropods are awesome, yo. Oh and like a true disappointment I don't have pictures of any of this, but next time I go hang with him I promise pictures a plenty and also of his snake collection.
Steam
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Last night I discovered a false widow living in my bedroom. These are a kind of spider, Steatoda nobilis, which physically somewhat resembles the black widow, hence their common name. But they're not related, black widows are genus Latrodectus.
They are however one of the spiders in the UK considered to have a "medically significant" bite. Which a lot of people, along with the evocative name, take to mean they are DEADLY. When in actual fact they might give a cat or a toddler a bad time but to an adult it would be like a wasp sting. Also, compared to black widows they are tiny, this one is about 1cm legspan.
They've been in this country for well over a century but for reasons unknown the papers have decided to make a big stink over them in recent years so people have this impression they are a newly introduced deadly species and collectively shit themselves about them.
I've never actually seen one in the flesh before so I was pretty pleased to find it on my windowsill. I have named it Copernicus.
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Foolproofthats what my hearts becomein that place you dare not look staring back at youRegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
I go into the woods every day. the mosquitoes are bad here this year, the spiders are catching up. The webs are stretched across open areas where there is a breeze. I try to stay in moving air to avoid mosquitoes so I end up in many webs. You can step back out of them and they won't stay stuck to you if you do it carefully. Hard to do when you know there is one of these gals in it.
i see dead spiders with the large shell like (and egg filled?) abdomens in the webs. maybe they kill and seize each other's webs, I don't know. I used a moth to try and lure one down after I spooked it but it seemed to know something was going on and wouldn't move nearer to me.
I may try and take various powders to make the webs more visible for photographs. I wonder what works best? I have mica powders, flour, soot, ash, graphite, and/or I could always grind up something.
Giant spider webs throughout my garage for about a year now. They don't get in the way of my tools so I leave them be. It's summer in Louisiana and I've only been bitten by like 5 mosquitoes. Keep on doing god's work, you little killers.
That's a really great picture of a really pretty moth, @Foolproof
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Foolproofthats what my hearts becomein that place you dare not look staring back at youRegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
he must have flown in through a car window that was barely open, maybe one inch. left the same way once it warmed up. in the woods they get so big you see the wings flex when they flap like a bird and they scare you when they suddenly open as a threat display when you get too close. when they are closed they are almost two dimensional and then they open and it is like a mouth with eyes coming out of nowhere.
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
I remember once there was a mantis right behind my cousin Jeannie's car, and he was doing his little threat display at it and we were late to a family dinner by like ten minutes because we waited for him to leave and stop trying to fight the car and eventually we just kinda shooed him away.
I'm visiting my family in New Hampshire this weekend and I found what is by far the biggest spider I've ever seen. Like, by a factor of three. Must've been a three-inch legspan, with a huge egg sac. Between the size, the coloration, and the location, I figure it's probably a fishing spider/dock spider/whatever they call them here.
Funny story. I've always had this vague recollection of being on this very beach as a little kid when a gargantuan spider ran out, which my dad then smashed with a rock. It was so enormous in my mind that for a long time I assumed it was just a dream that I was only half-remembering. But now I think that one of these ladies could have easily seemed that big through the eyes of a four-year-old.
Switch: SW-2431-2728-9604 || 3DS: 0817-4948-1650
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Foolproofthats what my hearts becomein that place you dare not look staring back at youRegistered Userregular
Big ol' orb weaver built a rather large web connecting from the top of our door frame to the railing directly beside it so the web is draped right in front of the door.
E: image fixed
SirToasty on
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Foolproofthats what my hearts becomein that place you dare not look staring back at youRegistered Userregular
Either I am just not seeing it properly or I don't know my spider anatomy well enough to find the head. Irl she would hold her legs up to hide her eyes.
These are all pretty much the same and the quality could be better.
And this guy just because it has been hard to get good photos of the butterflies I see in the woods. I need to get a zoom lens or something.
Foolproofthats what my hearts becomein that place you dare not look staring back at youRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
It helps to have these around, they are taller than me and found in little forests. I wander around in government own woodlots alongside the highways that were built in the sixties. Lots of abandoned farms and land that has been fallow for 50 years. I guess the pesticides are fading out. I have never wanted to kill or permanently capture animal specimens or I'd have a net and kill jar already. Frames of my local species would look great on my walls. Being able to take photos and then identify or study in zoom lets me finally pursue a long standing interest.
The wing patterns especially the fuzzy, fading stripes on the front edge of the forward wings have caught my eye. I have tried painting the hawk, falcon, and turkey feathers I find because of those same stripes. It would be nice as a tattoo. I think of it as sort inter-species communication symbol. I've started thinking of them like the songs of birds, frogs, or aquatic mammals. I haven't a clue what they are really saying but I know information is involved and so I spend time wondering how evolutionary forces could ever have settled on their signs and symbols and that makes me think about mimicry in nature and my head almost explodes.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Posts
My father would never pay for bee removal services for this above $100, so I want a way of coaxing them away from this small shelter.
My father is like a bear
He is also like a honey badger in that he doesn't give a fuck and will probably just pick up that roll of carpet and toss it in front of the house for the junk collectors to deal with
It was so big that my shitty vacuum cleaner couldn't suck it in
Please forgive me for not taking any pictures
Get a bucket, fill it with bees, then blow it up.
Sydney Funnel Web Spiders!
Platy
I can assure you it is in good health, I put it down outside
I can't have you pull a sad internet face because of me
But if it actually survived I guess it's not so sad.
I mean I don't have any issues with most animals, but I was kind of worried about a creature that large being able to bite, albiet in defense. He said it wasn't an issue, dropped the monster in my hand, and I was instantly okay with it. I think it was the weight; other than the occasional shifting of the leg it felt like those semi-realistic rubber/plastic toys a lot of us had as kids. And they were kinda cute just hissing at everything like a grumpy old man.
He also had quite a collection of sow bugs and pill bugs (which I just learned are genus Armadillidium which is fantanstic). Like, pumpkin orange ones that still aren't mature. And he's breeding native Armadillidium to try and develop the yellow.
OHOHOH and he has a small brood of native cockroaches, ~1" when mature, that are very unique because they still harbor protists, like termites do, to digest cellulose. The trippy thing is that this particular species will raise a clutch of young for 2 years until they are mature, nursing them with a rudimentary 'milk' that also contains the protists.
Arthropods are awesome, yo. Oh and like a true disappointment I don't have pictures of any of this, but next time I go hang with him I promise pictures a plenty and also of his snake collection.
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
They are however one of the spiders in the UK considered to have a "medically significant" bite. Which a lot of people, along with the evocative name, take to mean they are DEADLY. When in actual fact they might give a cat or a toddler a bad time but to an adult it would be like a wasp sting. Also, compared to black widows they are tiny, this one is about 1cm legspan.
They've been in this country for well over a century but for reasons unknown the papers have decided to make a big stink over them in recent years so people have this impression they are a newly introduced deadly species and collectively shit themselves about them.
I've never actually seen one in the flesh before so I was pretty pleased to find it on my windowsill. I have named it Copernicus.
i see dead spiders with the large shell like (and egg filled?) abdomens in the webs. maybe they kill and seize each other's webs, I don't know. I used a moth to try and lure one down after I spooked it but it seemed to know something was going on and wouldn't move nearer to me.
I may try and take various powders to make the webs more visible for photographs. I wonder what works best? I have mica powders, flour, soot, ash, graphite, and/or I could always grind up something.
Are the white blobs wrapped up bugs or egg sacs?
E: They're in a web but my phone/camera can't pick that up.
(a lady friend found this lady where she works.)
And this moth was found sleeping on my art pens and paint markers in my car's dashboard. I guess he liked the colors. Passive art ftw.
I found a few of these guys under acorn dropping trees. Are they like an oak gall with eggs or larva inside?
That last picture looks like a gall to me, but there's so many gall-makers out there I couldn't begin to guess what's in it
Well it's that time of year, and for whatever reason we'll usually end up with multiple dudes chillin' out on our main hangar's door
mantids are great
maybe they're waiting to grab other bugs out of the air?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
E: image fixed
These are all pretty much the same and the quality could be better.
And this guy just because it has been hard to get good photos of the butterflies I see in the woods. I need to get a zoom lens or something.
I'm totes jelly
The wing patterns especially the fuzzy, fading stripes on the front edge of the forward wings have caught my eye. I have tried painting the hawk, falcon, and turkey feathers I find because of those same stripes. It would be nice as a tattoo. I think of it as sort inter-species communication symbol. I've started thinking of them like the songs of birds, frogs, or aquatic mammals. I haven't a clue what they are really saying but I know information is involved and so I spend time wondering how evolutionary forces could ever have settled on their signs and symbols and that makes me think about mimicry in nature and my head almost explodes.
Do not do this at home kids
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden