My Friend Roscoe

You may have noticed that I have a growing fascination with spiders. Who in their right mind would keep a Black Widow spider captive for several weeks just to observe it?! :D I find spiders totally fascinating and I love taking pictures of them because they are so cool looking! The other evening I was looking around on the walls on our porch while the dogs were out doing their business, and I noticed something tiny that seemed like it might be a tiny spider. Peering closer, I saw that it was a tiny orb weaver spider that had strung a web next to the front door! I grabbed the camera and took some shots without the flash, and this picture is one that I think turned out really neat. The glow from our porch light gave the spider a yellow color and the background colors give this image a kind of dreamy quality. I really like that I got a shallow depth of field which included its eyes and parts of its legs too, along with some strands of glimmering web to give just enough information to show the story. Once I got a look on my computer, I recognized with delight that this tiny spider is a baby garden orb weaver, which will grow in size from its current body size of 1/8" to a body size of about 3/4"!! I am certain because I know of several adults that I love to visit every few days and this baby is a miniature version!. HELP ME PICK A NAME!! :D If this baby likes living in its current location, I will get to watch it grow up, and because I'll be seeing it every day, I think it's only right to give it a proper name! :D I thought maybe you guys might have a suggestion or two, so please feel free to list a name that you like, and I'll make a decision which name wins! :) (By the way, I have no clue about gender, but I don't care...I would be happy to choose any good name, so give me your best ideas! :D

Thanks to all of you who helped come up with some cute names! Here they are in alphabetical order: Biscuit • Charlotte • Crawly McCrawlerson • Downspider • Eensie-Weensy • Flo • Frank • George • Gold Man • Golden Spider • Goldie • Goldie Doorsie • Goldy Spidy • Joe • Neatto Netto • Nitty Gritty Netto-Grosso • Roscoe • Roxie • Silence • Wacky Spidy • Wonder Webmaker I loved them all, but after hours of careful consideration, our darling doorway spider has now been named... Roscoe Frank McCrawlerson!! Hooray!!! :D Honorable mentions to: Biscuit: can't choose this because this is one of my parrot's nicknames! Charlotte: I love this name but this spider will grow up to look very different than the Charlotte we all know and love ...this one will have prickly hair all over its legs, and that's not very lady-like, is it?! :D (BTW, Charlotte's Web was one of my favorite books as a kid and I loved both movies!) Flo: I like this very much, but since my first two favorites were male names, our little spider might be confused having both boy and girl names! :D George: can't pick this because this is the name we call all the Blue-Belly Lizards we see running around! :D Gold names: They are all so nice but you'll see that in proper lighting, this spider does not look golden, though he or she IS quite a golden treasure to me! :) Joe: LOL, Joe, you may not name a spider after yourself! :D Bad Joe! Go stand in the corner! :D Roxie: I love this name but you also picked my favorite name and it's important to share! :D By the way, I uploaded another picture of Roscoe showing his size compared to a dime...I think you'll all be pretty amazed how tiny he is!!

This is another picture I took of Roscoe as a baby, isn't she the cutest?! :D

I was delighted to see that my new little friend could catch food! :)

Every day I visit Roscoe several times to see how she's doing. This is the position she's in during the daytime while she rests and waits for nighttime. Her species is nocturnal, so when it gets dark, I will often find her building a web and hanging out in the center of it. She's slowly getting bigger! Did you know that some spiders have a kind of antifreeze in their blood so they don't die from the cold. I was concerned about winter approaching and wondered what will happen when it gets really cold. Apparently, this little girl should have been born in the springtime, but instead, she was probably born in August, so I will keep my fingers crossed that she'll survive!

I thought it would be really fun to compare Roscoe to a dime, so I stuck one to the wall right next to her and took a picture! (I moved the dime over just a bit and made the background black) I just love this picture because it really shows how small and cute this little girl is! :D

STORY TIME!!!!! SHE MADE IT!!!!! SHE MADE IT!!!! Roscoe Frank McCrawlerson* has survived her hibernation (brumation) through a freezing winter!! And here she sits triumphantly upon a moth four times her size that she caught, tied up, hoisted up to her spot where she lives, and is guarding, proud and victorious! HOORAY, HOORAY for my little friend!!!! *does a Snoopy Dance all over the room* *I discovered in time that Roscoe was actually a female, but kept her name as it was given. I have changed all gender to reflect that she is a female. I met Roscoe back at the beginning of September when I noticed her tiny 1/4" form in the center of a web she built just next to our front door on our porch! I was instantly smitten by this adorable little spider, and I took lots of pictures of her over the next month or two. However, I began to worry about her because winter was fast approaching. I learned that spiders can survive a freezing winter and will sometimes hibernate without dying. Spiders, like many other creatures (including frogs), have a kind of anti-freeze in their blood and this is how they can stay alive when other animals die. When the temperatures began to dip into the freezing zone, Roscoe stopped making her orb-shaped webs and sat in her little nook with legs pulled in, never moving. But I didn't think she was dead, and I took a peek at her every single day, hoping but with a worry in my heart. I know she's "just" a spider, but I love this little lady and I really wanted her to make it!! The months ticked off... November... December... January... February... and then March came and just when I began to worry that she might possibly be dead, I found her in the middle of a new web she'd made one night a few days ago!! I was so excited!! MY LITTLE BUDDY WAS ALIVE!!!! We had some flightless fruit flies in a jar, and I sprinkled a few in my hand and threw them at the web, hoping at least one would stick. DIRECT HIT!! One of them stuck and Roscoe POUNCED!! YAYYYYY!!!!! Oh how happy I was that she had a snack! Yesterday I tossed more flies in and she got one to eat! YES!! Last night I let the dogs out and took a peek...I saw something twirling near her spot, and I nearly yelled in delight! Roscoe was riding on this moth, which was twisting and twirling from a strong reinforced strand of web that Roscoe fashioned, and she was running all over the moth, which was completely encased in web! Just INCREDIBLE!!! How such a small spider can overpower a large moth and keep it from escaping...it's amazing!! I checked an hour later and she'd reeled in his prize and was sitting just as she is now, waiting for the moth to die before starting in on her magnificent feast! I took some quick pictures but I was hoping she'd still be there at midnight so I could take pictures for my 365 today...and just like a good friend, she waited for me to get my pictures!!! WHAT A PAL!!!! This morning I looked and she'd already released the moth's body from her web, and I found it below, an abandoned husk. I cooed at Roscoe, who was back on her spot, and told her how happy I was that she'd made it through the winter just fine!! I've been smiling all day long! So happy!!! John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.[6] He is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life".[citation needed] He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf. Wkipedia: Jack London

Would you just LOOK at how GORGEOUS Roscoe has become?! As a baby, she was shades of beige and just a bit of orange tones. In the past couple of weeks, a lot of things have been happening...first of all, she's getting bigger and bigger and bigger! Below you'll see a picture of her as a little baby next to a dime. Today she's almost the size of a dime!! And take a look at the coloring!!! Lovely tones of orange, russet and yellow against a background of dove-beige. And wow, she's eating like there's no tomorrow, quickly tying up everything that should be unlucky enough to get caught in her web. Last night I saw two mosquito hawks and a large moth in her web and boy does she zoom all over the place when she's busy with a new victim! Totally amazing to see. It's going to be heartbreaking when she dies sometime this summer...I really love this little lady, but I know she will only live a year. Who knows though...maybe she'll make a big egg sac and I'll get to watch all of her babies hatch and find their way out into the world! It's all very exciting to me and I feel so privileged to have this special spider next to our front door and get to see it grow up and live its life. :) By the way, if I'm correct, Roscoe should eventually grow to the size of a quarter, her abdomen about the size of a dime. She's a Cat-Faced Orb Weaver, and that's how large the other ones I've seen are.

This morning I took a peek at my darling little spider friend who lives on our porch and noticed that during the night she'd shed her skin! (There is a picture in a note above) This molting is actually called "ecdysis", and is something that happens in many invertebrates. Roscoe continues to grow and although I keep called him a male at first, this spider is most definitely a female, as the males of this species are much smaller. She will continue to grow and is probably sending out pheremones with a hopeful mate to appear sometime soon! Let's cross our fingers, I'm very excited about the upcoming egg sac! :D If you would like to know more about spiders molting, Wiki has a good page about this process here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecdysis