Itsy bitsies

There are 33,000 spiders on my front lawn. More or less. Or, at the least, an average of 5,000*. And a few have moved inside to share my space; estimates range from about 30 to 100 spiders in an average house at any one time.

So where are they? Here, there's a small one behind the microwave, and a big female under the printer cabinet. And one turns up in the kitchen sink or the bathtub, several days a week. Where are the other 25 to 95?

Mostly, they're tiny.

I've been posting my daily spider to the Arachtober pool this month, but now the standard is to post 2 daily for the rest of the month. And I've run out of spider pics. And it's raining too hard to go poking around the lawn looking for one of those 5,000. So I took the camera, a flashlight, and the big hand lens, and searched every cranny in my house.

I found 6 spiders. Very small spiders. One was just a dust speck on the wall and I had to check with the magnifying lens to be sure it was a spider.

Cute, isn't she?

Slightly (very slightly) larger, on an antique rustic cupboard.

I don't know what that yellow thing is. It looks like some sort of beetle. I found the remains of several miniature critters in crevices, insects or crustaceans that I couldn't recognize.

Almost invisible. A cellar spider, with her egg sac, in an antique Nootka basket. She must be an adult, given the eggs, but she's much smaller than any cellar spider I've seen up to now.

This guy's about 2 mm. long. He's in the crack of a sculptural branch Laurie brought home some 30 years ago from Chase.

Out in plain sight on the wall. About 1/8 inch long, body length.

Beside the others, she looks gigantic, but she's still a youngster. Trapped in a drinking glass, trying to climb the wall.

Now, maybe if I pry off the baseboards. And climb under the sink and check the underside of the counter. Or ... Those other 89 spiders have to be somewhere!

*Using Turnbull's figures: 842 spiders x 40 (approx.) sq.m., or 130.8 x 40.