Now, for the spiders' tale of woe...
On Sunday Treebeard accompanied me to work. He is a park volunteer now and quite handy to have around. Not only is he very knowledgeable about all things natural, he really enjoys sharing his knowledge with others -- a valuable asset! He is also extremely observant. Just before closing time he noticed the spiders floating on the canal and called me over. We fished them out and I immediately suspected we had found the contents of a mud dauber's (or dirt dauber, if you prefer) nest.
If you are not familiar with daubers, let me give you a brief rundown...A dauber is a spider wasp, she builds a nest of mud that consists of a series of individual chambers. The wasp hunts spiders, stings them and crams several into a chamber, laying an egg on the last one before sealing the chamber. The spiders are not dead -- dead ones would decay and that would be a bad thing. When the egg hatches, the young grub begins to munch on the bounty left by its mom. After it eats what has been provided and grows sufficiently, it pupates and then emerges as an adult the next spring. Pretty cool, eh?
If you look at the pictures below you will notice an egg on a spider's leg in the first photo and in the second you will see a grub munching away on a spider's abdomen.
How the contents of a dauber's nest ended up floating in the canal is a mystery. Some critter looking for a snack may have broken open the nest or perhaps the wake of a passing boat saturated a nest that had been built under the dock, causing it to dissolve. It's anyone's guess.
