Cool Science

(spider before the big catch)

Yesterday I was walking down the sidewalk on my way back home from a neighbor's house. As I approached our nextdoor neighbor's house I noticed a HUGE spiderweb with a HUGE spider in it. It was a cool looking spider and a very impressive web. I went in the house and told Julia that I had something to show her. I grabbed the camera and Karley decided to come with us. We looked at the big spider and talked about the large web. Next, I asked the girls if they thought the spider was going to catch anything in the web.

(injecting venom and beginning to wrap meal)

Then....BAM....a bee flies into the web!!!! Just that fast! The spider quickly made its way to the trapped bee and injected its venom into it (this we learned from reading about spiders as part of Julia's Charlotte's Web lapbook we are currently working on). Then the spider spun web and very quickly wrapped up the bee. It was lightening speed! I've seen bugs caught in webs before, but I don't think I have ever seen one in action like this. The girls saw the whole thing. I had my camera. It was like it was just meant to be with us there to witness the whole thing. We could not have asked for better timing. And then after the spider wrapped its dinner up into a small ball of web, it did a quick patch job on the web and then went to the center and rested (it even looked tired!). The whole thing was really pretty amazing. And so much more interesting than reading about it in a book.

(meal safely wrapped up...yum)