Monday, August 08, 2005

Daddy Long-Legs-A-Palooza

Seems like a baby boom of Daddy Long-Legs's in our yard this summer. Ms J thinks I'm crazy when I pick them up to scoot them out of our way, but they're such lovely creatures, and their tiny sticky feets feel so tickly in my arm hair.

BTW, did you know there are two sorts of Daddy Long-Legs? There's the spider, which we have so many of just now, and then there's the insect, which I grew up around in the Northwest. The insects have an unfortunate habit, a la the crane fly, of losing legs under the slightest stress. A useful survival mechanism, perhaps, but challenging for the human who's trying to relocate the creature out-of-doors.

2 comments:

senioritis said...

I am amazed by how many of them there are. When I go out in the morning to pick breakfast raspberries, there's a daddy longlegs on each cluster. According to the nature column in the Norwich Evening Sun, this is also a plentiful year for deerflies and garden snakes. I've seen practically no garden snakes, whereas most years, they live in the cinder blocks around the compost pile (it's warm in there!) and come out to sun themselves. But deerflies? I had one chewing on me while I was climbing a hill on my bike the other day. It kept biting, and I kept shooing it away. Finally it settled down where I couldn't get it: on my butt. Chomped on me right through the Lycra cycling pants. At least daddy longlegs don't bite!

susansinclair said...

Deerflies defeinitely need more predators! I won't miss them in the Big City...