Greedy!

The apples on the tree outside my bedroom window are ripe and dropping on the ground. I've collected several bowlfuls for eating, made a batch of applesauce, and baked a few with oatmeal crumbles. The compost bin is full of apple cores, and the house is full of fruit flies.

I've trapped many, but there are always more. And now my corners are full of tiny spiders getting fat on fruit flies. I appreciate their help.

Fruit fly on the kitchen wall.

A few of the apples, with the few fruit flies that didn't leave when I approached.

Fruit flies on a blemish on an apple.

A small cross spider, Araneus diadematus, has built herself a web in a handy location (for me) just at eye level by the kitchen entrance, and seems to be a bit bigger every day. I caught her two days ago with a mouthful of fruit fly:

She's so handy I can even measure her without disturbing her. She's 7 mm long today.

 I've set up a fruit fly trap, which did reduce the airborne population a bit, but then I decided to feed my friendly cross spider. I took off the lid an inch away from her web, and two fruit flies hit the web immediately. Instantly, half a second or less later, Little Miss Patience, here, had dashed across the web and caught one of the flies. As expected.

What surprised me was that now, with her fangs full of fruit fly, she dashed to the other end of the web and grabbed the second fly, then returned to the centre carrying both of them. Which she tied up in one little bundle and settled down to eat.

A veritable feast; a two-fruit-fly taco!

When I came back a few hours later, there was no sign of the flies. The web was clean and repaired, and LMP was sitting in the centre, waiting again.

And the rest of the flies from my trap were loose; they're even perching on my computer screen as I work.

I wonder; if I gave her three flies, would she catch all three together?