Consider-the-Lilies Web Gallery
Cobweb Spider
One day I noticed a bumblebee buzzing around my garage, thought I needed to shoo it away, but forgot about it.
Later that week I raised the door and was sorry to see its carcass hanging on a long leader off the main sheet of a spider web.
Unfortunately for the bee, but fortunately for this House Spider—another name for this variety—this large catch had bumbled its way into the web.
No doubt it would provide sustenance for a long time!.
A member of the Sheet-web spider family, the Cobweb Spider is responsible for the loosely shaped webs that are often found in the corners of outbuildings, and garages, and in many horror films—at least in facsimile!
Other trappers , such as the Garden Spider build precise webs with geometric exactness. As one would expect from their category name, however, Cobweb Spiders, spin a completely different type of web, one that is, in a word, imprecise. Their webs are simple in their construction—essentially just a sticky, silken net that extends from side to side to span and fit the shape of the chosen corner. The Filmy Dome spider also builds a fine sheet-web, but its habitat is outside; we find it in sheltered corners behind shrubbery in our garden.
The House Spider to the right has a small grasshopper and a "rollie-pollie" (aka sow bug) in the web, which are typical of the prey caught in these sheet webs.
Although made of strands of a very fine silk, and thus hardly visible even in these close-up views, the cobwebs are hard to miss in my garage.
This is because the sticky materiel collects anything that is light enough to be blown into the corner by a passing breeze.
The almost invisible is made visible by the messy accumulation of debris stuck to the silken strands.
So messy are these webs that if a Cobweb or House Spider web is indeed seen in a house, the house-keeping would probably be on a par with that of Norman Bates and that one room in his motel!
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