Tag: Wolf Spider

Happy Hauntings!

Welcome to our favorite day of the year! It is no secret we here at Intrigued enjoy the Halloween season. Although this holiday is continually under attack by the corporate Christmas greed, we will continue to push back and treat this day in all its haunting glory. Our Halloween related heavy lifting actually comes several months earlier as we prep and build out the annual Haunted Trail. We have found the weather is more cooperative at the end of September and allow us to bypass all the conflicts that seem to collide later in October (HS/College football, World Series, band competitions and, of course, other Halloween gatherings). The bonus is we get to extend the season’s festivities. Probably best of all, we get to sit back, stress free and enjoy ourselves on the actual day. As we do not get any trick-or-treater this far in the country, we head out for a nice dinner and then spend the rest of the night searching for (and rating) Halloween displays – an excellent way to get great ideas for next year’s trail.

Haunted Trail 2024

Have a hauntingly good day, don’t eat too much candy, scare your neighbors and maybe catch a good horror show to cap off the evening. More importantly, continue to celebrate the day or it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing artificial Christmas trees in the stores at the start of the month – oh wait, we already do @#%@#%$@@!

Just to help set the mood, I grabbed a few shots from our trail to share. Apologies as I have not had time to properly process them yet. Hit the jump to enjoy!

Continue reading Happy Hauntings!

Night Dwellers (part 1 of likely many throughout the year)

One of my chores, if you will, is to take our dogs out before retiring for the night.  Due to the potential for coyotes and other non-friendly pet wildlife we coexists with out in the country, this involves hitting our flood lights which illuminates our entire porch and a large section of the yard.  You cannot be too careful when taking care of a 5 pound dog.  This instant light tends to surprise animals, insects and the like.  As a result, I tend to see some interesting (and sometimes scary) things previously undercover of the night.  I decided to snap a few shots to share the experience with my readers – especially those people who have not experienced the country life.

The first subject for the night dwellers collection is the Wolf Spider.

Wolf Spider

Interesting enough, I have often heard these spiders referred to as Timber Spiders, but I was unable to find that name on the web.  It may be time to hit the bookstores and pick up a spider reference book since at least once a week a new species pops up around here.  They are not venomous to humans, but their hairy texture and potentially large size have a tendency to provoke pretty aggressive stomping by those caught off guard.  As an FYI, the Brown Recluse is really the only venomous spider we have to worry about around here.  Those tend to avoid any contact and therefore not a big concern but I do give a quick scan of the woodpiles and such just in case.

Wolf Spider

My general rule is to let all insects and arachnids live if they are not found inside the house or are smaller than a Loon coin.  This specimen was definitely on the larger end of that (if not bigger) but since it tolerated my flash photography it was given a second chance.  I have a new lens coming for my camera that will give me much sharper shots, but hopefully you can tell these things are extremely hairy and look quite formidable.  The eye reflection was pretty neat through the glass, but did not really make it through the reduction process which makes the image web friendly.  By eye, I mean the reflection coming off of one or more of their eight eyes.

Follow the jump to see another image of the wolf spider taken a few days later.  That one has an egg sac.

Continue reading Night Dwellers (part 1 of likely many throughout the year)