Early this morning I filled up with gas on my way to a wildflower search. When I pulled in behind this pickup I thought I might have found a fellow arachnophile. On more than one occasion I have blogged about spiders and advocated adding the word "arachnophilia" to our dictionaries. Movies and printed material promulgating archnophobia, and the presence of that word in most dictionaries, have always irritated me. I feel spiders have gotten a raw deal. So, when I spoke to the fellow driving the truck, I asked for permission to photograph his tie-down and told him about my plan for this post. I am happy to report that he approved. While standing on the front bumper of my vehicle to take the photograph, I imagined spiders on the scale of this "web" and how one might attract them. First, I though of a large model of a female garden spider that might attract a male. Then I thought it might be better to make a giant model of a grasshopper or some other typical garden spider meal, wrap it in the same kind of cord in the web, and attach it. I don't know if spiders are partial to prey they have captured and prepped on their own, or if they would fall for a human-created, pseudo-meal.
Well, it's too early in the season for spiders anyway, so I moved on to my wildflower photography.
By the way, check out Plumas County's "Bloom Blog" where my first wildflower photos of the season appear. Then come back to this blog later in the day. I will have posted this morning's findings, found within a mile radius of Quincy.
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