Where Did They Go??

  For years and years, it seems as if every tree had a huge spiderweb dangling in it.  The "banana" spiders (as they are locally called) reigned in the bug world.  Their 5ft webs spanned between trees and caught just about every bug in the neighborhood.  We marveled at our eight-legged friends and their ability to survive against all odds.  The spiders survived storms, birds flying through their webs and hard freezes.  These spiders, the Golden Silk Orb Weavers or Giant Woods Spiders, are well worth "spider-watching"!

  Here lately, however, I am lucky to find five or six of the spiders each summer.  They seem to be on the decline in the area around the Bayou.  Perhaps our clearing the yard of more and more underbrush has encouraged the spiders to move elsewhere, although, our interaction with the spiders never seemed to bother them before.  So far this year, I have found three active webs.  One was in the marsh, another in the old oak tree and the third was in the bed of my old pickup truck.  Sadly, I know what happened to the truck-dwelling spider.  The vehicle was needed so Ms. Charlotte Spider had to be evicted.  I gently tried to help her move to the mulberry tree next to the truck but that did not seem to be to her liking.  Although she stayed in the tree for three days, her web cannot be found now.  I am thinking that high tide dislocated the marsh-dwelling spider.  Hopefully, she survived the flooding and was able to move her egg sacs with her.  As for the oak tree web, I just found it this morning.  The normally pristine web was bedraggled and the spider, herself, has seen better days.  She is missing several legs but had still managed to capture a nice sized bug of some sort.  Hopefully, she will have the strength to spin her egg sacs and lay many eggs. We need these spiders!

 Perhaps I am one of the few folks who actually like having the large webs dangling in the treetops or spanning between arbor posts.  The spiders are part of the charm of the Bayou and their decline makes me sad.  It also makes me ponder how many bugs we will have in the coming spring without the spiders there to munch them???