The Urban Pantheist

I'll be darned if I can remember where this is (a short ways from Rancho Palos Verdes) but by gum there was no passing by it without taking a picture. Thank god it was snapshot time too! Otherwise these would be a string of pictures of my brother my father and I in bars and in cars.

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Thanks to reader SB of Chestnut Hill Massachusetts for providing this photo of a crocus participating in an ecosystem in North America. This hairy little bee is just covered with crocus pollen. It's a lovely picture as well as a clear answer to my earlier query.

This should be especially informative for those of you outside the U.S.

In Utah women are primarily vessels for incubating children, and they will be punished if they act otherwise.

In Arizona, thinly veiled racism is alive and well. (bonus fun fact: Arizona was one of the last 3 states to make Martin Luther King day a holiday; the others being "Confederate Flag" South Dakota and our next state...)

New Hampshire is hilariously explicit with its bigotry!


I know you'll think I'm cherry picking weird news stories about politicians being insane, and I am, but fair is fair. My state?

In Massachusetts we equate voter frustration with flying an airplane into a building full of people.

There was a slight edge to the new vet's voice: "Who's good with spiders?" She's new, forgive her. I practically shoved my vet tech coworker aside to be the first to see the offending arachnid. (It's been a long fairly bugless winter, forgive me). A small gray spider, all 8 legs outstretched like the fingers on two hands, slowly descended on a silk line, just to the left of the new vet's desk. I didn't know she wasn't a spider fan. To her credit she merely wanted (with some urgency) for the spider to be relocated out of doors. Of course, no problem; but first: some pictures.

Weber's spider guide identified it as an "inconspicuous running crab spider." Ten syllables is a bit much for a common name, so I'll stick with simply "running crab spider," Genus Philodromus. The individual above is curled in a defensive posture, having had his fill of rough handling by the photographer. Normally this type of spider is flat against a wall, or (better for his camouflage) a tree. They spin no web, instead chasing down insect prey or seizing it caught unawares. They are not closely related to other crab spiders, like the goldenrod crab spider, or the giant crab spider.

According to Weber, a spider found in the winter is likely to be a youngster, which can even be found running across the surface of the snow. They mature in spring and produce eggs in summer. Weber implies that Adults don't survive a full year, but this one appears to be a mature male, by his size (5mm body length more or less) and his palps. Looking like little boxing gloves, the palps are sensory appendages that on the male are used in the delicate mating act. He uses them to convey a packet of sperm to the female's epigynum.* Suffice it to say: if your spider holds little boxing gloves in front of its face it's probably a male.

Why does the running crab spider come indoors? The short answer is probably "because it can." Its flattened body makes it more likely to see tiny cracks in doorways and windowsills as opportunities. Once inside the artificial tropics we provide, it has its pick of flies, moths and other household wildlife to prey on.



*I don't think I want to keep on describing spider sex, but this glossary was helpful to me, if you care to go on. It begins the definition of Epigynum: "The more or less complicated apparatus for storing the spermatozoa..." That's all I could take for now.

For those of you who like to talk of such things (dirty sex things) you should know now that there is a word for having...untraditional sexual relations as a way to get around God's prohibition against premarital sex. Here it is.

On another note, I should probably retire my Musharraf icon, not to mention the one's referring to a certain other ex-president.

The groom sagely explained that his wedding was going to be half his relatives and in-laws, and half his drunken friends. Thus the underwear with the kilt. Even I'm jarred by seeing this on my journal, so I'm putting up an lj cut.

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We walked the dogs around Leverett Pond today and it felt like an honest to goodness spring day. And thanks to my new hand-me-down camera, which Alexis used to take all the best 365 urban species photos, I was able to record some of it. Pictured above, I'm fairly certain, is a male palm warbler.

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Last Sunday there was an Urban Nature Walk in section of Franklin Park called "the Wilderness." It's a wooded puddingstone hill, originally intended as a place where city dwellers could experience what it looked like in the area before European Settlement. Here Pete has climbed a puddingstone ledge.
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