10-22-2021, 08:27 PM
It's good to know that I'm not the only man on the planet that shoots his spiders.
Although I do think the fella is a bit over-dressed for traditional spider hunting...
Australia is a bit like Pandora in the movie "Avatar" - everything there wants to kill everything else there and eat it's eyes for juju beans.
As an aside, we also have spider-hunting wasps here in these mountains called "mud daubers" that build nests out of mud stuck to surfaces, hunt spiders and immobilize then with a sting, then place the immobilized but still alive spiders inside the mud nests with their eggs so that the larvae have a live meal when they hatch out. I've never been stung by a mud dauber, and I don't know anyone who has. They apparently prefer to reserve their venom for spiders, and are not aggressive or territorial like normal wasps are. When I lived in Russell County, VA, it appeared that black widows were the preferred prey of mud-daubers, judging by which spiders fell out when a nest was broken open.
.
Although I do think the fella is a bit over-dressed for traditional spider hunting...
Australia is a bit like Pandora in the movie "Avatar" - everything there wants to kill everything else there and eat it's eyes for juju beans.
As an aside, we also have spider-hunting wasps here in these mountains called "mud daubers" that build nests out of mud stuck to surfaces, hunt spiders and immobilize then with a sting, then place the immobilized but still alive spiders inside the mud nests with their eggs so that the larvae have a live meal when they hatch out. I've never been stung by a mud dauber, and I don't know anyone who has. They apparently prefer to reserve their venom for spiders, and are not aggressive or territorial like normal wasps are. When I lived in Russell County, VA, it appeared that black widows were the preferred prey of mud-daubers, judging by which spiders fell out when a nest was broken open.
.