It’s fairly well known that as you go up the food chain, every animal has its own natural predator – a creature that more often then not is the one that kills and eats the species beneath it. Usually, we’re up the top somewhere hacking and slashing and killing anything, squishing it into patties and selling it in Scottishly-monickered burger joints.
I have spotted one of these forces of nature at work over the weekend. Spiders. Now – they eat flies and stuff, but what is a spider’s natural predator? The more televisually-educated of you may assume it’s birds. Well, outside of Bill Oddie’s rather unfunny programmes (sorry, but I was raised on The Goodies and he was a lot funnier then), when did you last actually see a bird eat a spider? Exactly. So if you did, it’s a fluke.
No, nature’s natural spider predator is currently sat stretched out on my bed purring. It’s my cat. Just this afternoon I’ve seen her devour four of them, including this huge bulbous beast in Kim’s shed. At one point, I thought the spider had an eye on my cat, but KK fought bravely and crunched it down. In fact, I swear I heard the crunching.
I suppose spiders are ideal for a family dinner. Even with guests, everyone can have a leg.
My cats prefer bumble bees and mice.
So I pop any wandering spiders in me brothers cheerios when he isn’t looking.
One of my dear departed cats had the same idea. Spiders were great sport for her.
My dear departed dog, Skip, had the same idea once about wasps. One was bashing its head against a glass door about 1 – 2 feet off the ground. Skip sat there for a while summing the wasp up. You know how dogs do it. Thinking really hard with his head cocked to one side. After about a minute of this, he made up his mind. He stood up and started growling and barking giving it the “Hey! you’re in my house and I think you’re a threat!”, thing. Then he went for it. Up onto his hind legs, one paw on the door either side of the wasp, and then “CHOMP”, right in his mouth. He looked at me with his “I’ve defended the house” proud look on his face. Then “YELP” and spat out the wasp, who flew off in a pissed off manor.
He never took on a wasp again.
Babs – they’ll be good for him. Cheerios are made by Nestle so are made of polystyrene and dead, rotting babies (according to the Student Union anyway). Any protein you can thus chuck in will be helpful. That’s very kind.
Chris – wasps are evil and completely purposeless. Actually, I hate honey so the same goes for bees. They’re just fat wasps.
Bees – good – they’ll happily ignore you and amble on their way if you don’t move suddenly. Even then they’re more likely to buzz off rather than sting you. Not fat wasps.
Wasps – bad – they’ll sting anything that moves if the mood takes them. Sitting still is a reasonable defence as they can’t see too well – even so, if you smell strongly of something (like Fanta, Coke or mints) they know you’re there.
Spiders – ugh – if I know there’s one there, I have to know its exact location and velocity because the buggers give me the creeps.
Cats – evil – the ultimate in mammalian scheming. They’d rule the world if they weren’t so damn lazy.
The dog named Borris is pretty adept at catching spiders.
He kills then rolls on them and then leaves them for me to pick up and throw away.
SFG
Having witnessed wasps swarming in our garden twice (two different houses) they are seriously scary beasties.
The first time it happened, Miss P was a toddler so when she came in saying there were lots of wasps in the garden, I put it down to childish exaggeration, but when I went outside I found thousands of the buggers like a huge black, angrily buzzing cloud hovering around a tree.
Bravely, I grabbed Miss P under my arm and dived through the back door, slamming it shut and then ran round closing all the windows thinking, “****! ****! ****!”
They hung around for a couple of hours before disaapearing into the distance. Bloody unnerving, I can tell you.
Add to that, a good mate who nearly died from anaphylactic shock from a single wasp sting, well you start to take the little buggers seriously.
When I was about 10, I was out playing with a neighbour. One of us stood on a wasp’s nest – at least I assume we did. There was a *crack* then hundreds of the ******** rose up and went mental.
We ran like ****. I didn’t get stung once. He was covered in them.
Remember folks – you don’t have to outrun the wasps. Just the other kid you’re with.
Oh how I wish I had read this last night, just imagine the comments I could have made.
Keegan used to eat spiders – and daddy-long-legs – she always ate every last bit of them, but always with this look on her face as if to say, “This tastes horrible.”
Of course, after playing with them for several minutes – else where’s the fun in that?
my dog, holly eats flies well she trys to. She chases them around the house and the other day she actually caught one in her mouth and decided she didnt liek the taste of flies so she spat it out all mushed up on the carpet… hmm tasty…
Mushed fly is very awkward to get out of carpetting. I recommend grinding it in with a well-worn show until the stain spreads enough not to be noticeable.