May 02
…and that means it’s roach season again.
Our first wood roach of the year just visited. They live outside in the trees, which are quite delightfully wet right now due to the ongoing thunderstorm. There’s also lots of nice damp mulch out there, I bet they enjoy that too.
Yes, I admit it, I squealed. While I’m getting used to the little buggers by now, the first one of the season is always an unpleasant surprise.
The flies have returned too. The wolf spiders don’t seem as plentiful this year, or at least not yet. The lizards came out briefly during a warm spell a couple of weeks ago, but have disappeared again.
There has been a major snail population explosion. We had one make its way up our front door, but mostly they hang around at the bottom of the siding on the house. Our neighbors say they have about a hundred on the other side of their house.
Mar 04
It is a well-known fact—by which I mean, it’s something most people seem to believe, but I don’t know whether it’s actually true—that spider silk is the strongest substance known to man. Stronger for its thickness than steel.
Perhaps the record-breaking nature of the spider extends to other areas. Perhaps spider fur might be the softest fur known to man. Softer even than that of the sea otter.
Before long we might see spider farms, bodies of dead cows and piles of excrement left in artificial forests to attract flies into the spiders’ delicate yet oh-so-extraordinary webs. Men with vacuum devices would walk through—carefully—once a day, and suck out the biggest, plumpest spiders.
Once stripped and tanned, the spiderskin would be used to make the warmest, softest gloves. They would have three extra fingers on each hand, but nobody would care because they would be so comfortable and so chic.
Eventually it would become a fashion faux-pas to wear gloves with a mere five fingers, and wearers of mittens would be beaten to death by angry mobs.