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Spider Woman
May. 14th, 2011 06:36 pmIt's a good thing Eric was at the store. A little bit ago, I went to get Bea up from her nap. She had a diaper cover on with crappy velcro, so had one of the fancy diaper covers from a dress over the plain functional one to help keep it together. In between those two covers? A big old spider. Very startling, to say the least. I mean, how the heck does a spider go up her pants and then under some fairly form-fitting elastic to get up there? Especially since this was a fairly large specimen.
My protective inclinations warred with each other for a moment, long enough for rationality to resume, and I used her pants to scoop up the spider to protect both it and me and took it outside. It was really quite gorgeous, a deep red cephalothorax with a cream abdomen. After looking at it for a minute, I let it go and went back in to change her diaper and then identify it.
Turns out it's a pillbug/woodlouse/etc spider, Dysdera crocata (named for what it eats), and it's one of the most commonly found inside spiders in Utah. Odd, because I don't recall seeing one in the house before. The pictures I'm looking at have quite a wide range of colors on the cephalothorax, from brown to red, so maybe I'm just not remembering a more plain brown one. I'm assuming I've seen them outside at some point, though.
Here is the best resemblance to it that I've found. It was a much deeper red, though. Very pretty, as I said, and fortunately harmless. Still, if Bea develops any super powers in the near future, I guess I better look for a spider bite in her nether regions...
My protective inclinations warred with each other for a moment, long enough for rationality to resume, and I used her pants to scoop up the spider to protect both it and me and took it outside. It was really quite gorgeous, a deep red cephalothorax with a cream abdomen. After looking at it for a minute, I let it go and went back in to change her diaper and then identify it.
Turns out it's a pillbug/woodlouse/etc spider, Dysdera crocata (named for what it eats), and it's one of the most commonly found inside spiders in Utah. Odd, because I don't recall seeing one in the house before. The pictures I'm looking at have quite a wide range of colors on the cephalothorax, from brown to red, so maybe I'm just not remembering a more plain brown one. I'm assuming I've seen them outside at some point, though.
Here is the best resemblance to it that I've found. It was a much deeper red, though. Very pretty, as I said, and fortunately harmless. Still, if Bea develops any super powers in the near future, I guess I better look for a spider bite in her nether regions...
