on cats and pee and bugs and such

So the other day I made the enchanting discovery that our cat Agnes had not only peed on a few of the stuffed animals, she had actually crawled into the bins and peed on all of the stuffed animals. That was the day that I spent a good portion of my time washing and drying stuffed animals. The day that the sun came out and it began to heat up outside. A perfect day to lay all of the freshly laundered animals outside to dry.

This turned out to be not such a bad way to spend a day (what is, after all, a bad way to spend a day, when you think about it...) and Eva and I hung out quite a bit outside, mostly checking out the different ants living around our patio area. We are all well versed in the two families, the big ants and the little ants, where they live, how they spend their time, where they go on their forays- although truth be told we have- each of us- (Eva, Samuel, and I) followed the big ants on their treks across the patio to the area by the garden hose and none of us can figure out where they are going. They go, one after the other, one at a time, maybe one or two in a long line. They return. We follow and watch. They never carry anything to or from. My guess at this point is they are going for water? It seems like a very long trek for water but who am I to judge. Their colony is large and thriving and aside from the mini skirmishes they seem to have for no apparent {to human eyes} reason with the little ants, they are very prosperous.

After the third or fourth load of stuffed animals, I laid out a second sheet and Eva and I put more animals out to dry. Around the time that I was bringing out another load Eva started noticing so many baby spiders. One here. Another one. And then strangely all over the baby giraffe. Some on the baby penguin. How odd. Another one? Where are they coming from. I started looking around. Were they on the sheet? Were they in the house? Look Momma, they are coming from over here. And sure enough they were. We found the baby spider nest/egg that had popped open very close to where the animals were drying. So many baby spiders being coaxed out to the sunshine and wind. A perfect day to crawl out from the egg and start a new life...on a stuffed giraffe's head.

Amazingly, after I went inside again, Eva began "evacuating" all of the animals from the sheet closest to the spiders until there was just the baby giraffe. When I came back outside I picked up the spiders and their tiniest webs from the giraffe's head and the wind and I relocated them to other homes, away from the animals. Away from the possibility of being closed up inside a plastic bin in my garage...

This part was actually amazing to watch. Baby spiders everywhere, jumping on the forget-me-nots, cascading down onto the plastic kitchen and as I gently shook the spiders out of the sheet, Eva and I watched as so many of them ballooned out into the wind. Do you remember the scene in Charlotte's Web where the baby spiders became ballooners? These baby spiders definitely became ballooners. And so many of them. We are finding them all over our yard now, so many spaces just right for a baby spider web. These spiders will grow up to be garden spiders, spinning large orb webs across doorways and between tomato plants in the fall. For now I am enjoying their tiniest of orb webs in the rose bushes and among the chamomile as they gobble up an amazing number of aphids. Aphids! Who knew? They did apparently. Spiders always know right where to go.



So many stuffed animals drying in the sunshine...so many aphids loving the roses. If I were a spider that is definitely where I would build my web.



Can you see the baby spiders on baby giraffe's ear?