Mostly Spiders

It rained all day (Rain! Not snow!), so I couldn't go out for a bug walk, but I did find a few arthropods inside. However, they were all spiders, so, not the best edition of the blog for the arachnophobes. However, I do have one picture that is not scary, and I'll start with that one (Not that the others are scary. To me).

I learned something this winter:

 Deer chew cuds (what a ghastly sentence). I noticed recently that the deer like to lie down in the woods - for hours, sometimes - and I realized that they are chewing while they do that. So I looked it up. They have multiple-chambered stomachs like cows, and chew their cud. I never knew that. They also stare at the house while they do this, which is a little bit unnerving when I look out the window. Particularly when I look out the window intermittently over the course of about two hours and realize that they have been sitting there, staring at the house, for hours. Clearly they know that the bag of seed for the bird feeder is in here, and are plotting something...

Now for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 When I opened the shutters on the bedroom window this morning I found this spider on the window. Yes, on the inside.

 Dangling from a thread because it got tired of me taking pictures of it and bailed. Or maybe it was afraid of me.

 It crawled back up to the window, though, and sat still for a few seconds for this picture.

For years there was a spider that lived at the bottom of the basement stairs. I named her Basement Stairs Spider (Yes, I am really good at naming things). Eventually she died, and I felt kind of sad about it. Still she had an impressive life span, and I don't know how she found enough to eat, but she must have. I know she ate other spiders, based on the remains in and around her web. Anyway, there are two new spiders living at the bottom of the basement stairs.

 This one lives in Basement Stairs Spider's old corner.

This one lives nearby, in a different corner. This one is quite shy, and often when I go downstairs it ducks underneath the edge of the stair.

Apparently I am terrifying to spiders.