Here is a collection of spiders from around the house in celebration of Halloween.





Here is a collection of spiders from around the house in celebration of Halloween.





I have a Gulf Coast toad living in my garage. I went to take out the trash and he was sitting in the middle of the floor, not caring about my movements at all. Usually he hops away from me, but not today.

It turns out that there were grubs under the trash bags. Here is a video of him eating one. I used to think he used the garage as home base and went outside to eat. I guess that isn’t always necessary. Good toad.
My front door grape vine experiment with hot glued glass pebbles and thin draping strands of hot glue caught a spider.

I saw the spider as I was leaving the house and thought it odd that it was sitting there exposed. I pulled on some of the glue threads and it moved, so I gently pulled the threads away. It turns out the spider was tangled in the thin strands of plastic. When I pulled away enough of the elastic string, the spider mobilized and moved to a more protected area. I finished taking all the hot glue strands off the sculpture. I had no idea they were capable of entrapment.
I found an interesting feather getting out of my car at home. It was a dark gray with iridescent bronze sheen, and white edges. A new-to-me feather. I took a picture and put it into the iNaturalist app. The AI identification was no use: “bird”. The community of real people, however, came back with the answer: roadrunner. Neat!

We do have at least one pair of roadrunners that live in the area, so the identification makes sense. And it is molting season for most of the wild birds and my chickens, so the feather was most likely naturally shed, rather than the result of an attack.
I added a bird to my list of sightings! We had a painted bunting visit our bird feeder. What a pretty bird!

He was flirting with a female on the new bird feeder, and I love this photo where the female is getting after him and I caught him leaning away.
