Weirdboy Spider on My Indoor Hall Doorway

A Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus ). This is a common jumping spider found across the US. Often found indoors in warm weather.

I found this little weirdboy on my indoor hallway door frame. They are very curious and inquisitive and often do not run away when confronted. Instead, they will turn to face you and check you out with their gigantic eyes. They are mostly harmless, but apparently they can bite sometimes if you handle them. The bite is about as painful as a bee sting. This is part of a group of spiders called jumping spiders.

I looked him up on the Net and was surprised to find whole Internet communities full of bug lovers . Some of them even keep little guys like this for pets. There are even some girls and women who keep them as pets. Girl power! Down with arachnophobia!

He sure is a cutie, though, huh?

I got a measuring cup and put it underneath him and poked him a bit. He jumped down into the cup and then I took him outside and released him, since I usually don’t kill bugs except for pests. I often rescue them with my hand so I can release them outside if I am sure they are harmless.

I’ve never seen this weird spider before!

Groups Fight To Preserve Palouse Earthworm

It’s three feet long, it’s white, it smells like lilies, it spits when you pick it up, and it’s almost extinct. What is it? It’s the Giant Palouse Earthworm! Five groups, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Friends of the Clearwater, the Palouse Audubon Society, the Palouse Prairie Foundation and the Palouse Group of the Sierra Club, all filed a petition with the US U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Giant Palouse Earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Here is an old listing petition for the Giant Palouse Earthworm. The new one is probably similar. It’s only been seen on six occasions in the past 110 years. In 1897, it was described a “very abundant.” Multiple searches for it in the past two decades have come up blank, but it was recent found by a graduate student in 2005, so it’s apparently still around, though it is probably not abundant as it was in 1897. Considering all of the searches that have come up blank, it’s probably very rare instead. 99.9 The sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanchus phasianellus), white-tailed jack rabbit (Lepus townsendii), ferrunginous hawk (Buteo regalis), and spotted frog (Rana pretiosa) populations are seriously threatened. Two butterflies are rare – Johnson’s hairstreak (Callophrys johnsoni) is a species of concern and Shepard’s Parnassian (Parnassius clodius shepardii) is listed as a candidate species for State of Washington Species of Concern. Of these, I will say that the Colombia spotted frog definitely needs to be listed as an endangered species. Four plants, transparent milkvetch (Astragalus diaphanous), long-tubed evening primrose (Oenothera flava), liverwort monkey-flower (Mimulus jungermannioides) and kidney-leaved violet (Viola renifolia), have disappeared entirely. Other plants are considered rare, threatened or endangered, including Jessica’s aster (Aster jessicae), yellow lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum), Wanapum locoweed (Oxytropis campestris var. wanapum), broadfruit mariposa (Calochortus nitidus), Palouse thistle (Cirsium brevifolium), Palouse goldenweed (Haplopappus liatriformis) and Thompson’s clover (Trifolium thompsonii). Palouse goldenweed and Jessica’s aster probably need to be listed as threatened species by the USFWS. It’s said to be three feet long, but that’s actually as big as it can grow to. Any individual worm you find may be quite a bit shorter. An earlier petition was turned down in 2006 by Bush’s USFWS on the grounds that there was not enough information about the worm to warrant listing. In other words, the thing is so rare that there’s no way to tell if it’s endangered or not because hardly anyone ever finds one. In other words, if you can’t even count them, who knows how many there are? This is one of the binds that extremely rare or hard to find species fall into, and honestly, it’s just a trap used by FWS to deny listings. FWS, in denying the listing, suggested that just because 9 It does smell like lilies, and it is white. There are quite a few native earthworms in the US, but most of the worms that are used in bait are not native to the US. We used to dig for worms as kids at Talbert Lake in Huntington Beach back in the 1970’s, and there was a native worm that lived there that was white-colored. That worm was really killer on the local fish; it worked better than the worms you bought, probably because it was native to the area and the fish were used to eating them. The ground around that lake was pure peat former lakeshore and it was very easy to dig for worms, plus worms were very abundant in that extremely rich peat. I assume if you farmed that peat, you could grow some great crops; that soil was rich as Hell. In addition, that soil had a very strong and funky smell to it. Not so much that it smelled bad, more that it smelled like pure fertilizer. This link is a great backgrounder on the worm.

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)