Regular readers may recall that when we arrived in Aubeterre in late August, Richard and I spent some time doing a deep clean of the main parts of the house. A lot of that involved wiping spider poo off various surfaces, and it did look nice when we had finished.
I then read the papers, and discovered that September is the month when spiders mate, certainly for British house spiders. I have to say that in my experience, this does not apply to French house spiders. These little buggers seem to mate all year round like bunnies. Perhaps it’s the original adage of “No sex please, we’re British”?
And how do they actually find a mate? Do they just saunter along the ceiling and say ‘ullo darlin’? (Perhaps they use a dating app – SPIDER? Richard didn’t get this pun, and that may be a good thing. Apparently, web-based spiders are very sensitive to vibrations. The male leaves his web, and journeys around your house looking for a female in her web. He then plucks the edge of the web, announcing he is ready to mate, and the female responds (or doesn’t) to the vibrations. For some species, the males’ genitalia get destroyed by mating. In any case, the ales die in the winter. The female lays eggs which can take between 30 and 50 days to hatch, et voila – lots of baby spiders ready to start the spider lifecycle all over again. And emit all that poo…
As I am writing this, we have a web on the window opposite me with little black dots in – either eggs or teensy weensy incy wincey spiders. A robin is darting back and for from the tree behind, and pecking at the web, taking the eggs. Good to see nature in action.
Saturday dawned misty and damp – good spider mating weather then. The forecast predicted sunny intervals in the afternoon, and thunderstorms in the evening. Typical. We can have some cracking storms here, and can sometimes lose power for a short while. Richard made sure his laptop was charged up in case we lost power during Strictly (yeah, sorry).
Late afternoon, Richard came inside, saying that we had ants swarming out the back. This happened a couple of weeks ago as well. We were playing cards, and I kept brushing an ant off the table. Persistent little fella I thought, assuming it was the same ant. It was only when Richard leant forward to brush a few flying ants from my hair (eek) that we realised they were dropping on us from the roof over the balcony. They were everywhere, forming huge, black columns on the move. We had phantom itches all night, even though we knew they were outside.
We had planned to go into the village for aperos at about 6pm, but we were deterred by an enormous grey cloud overhead and distant rumblings of thunder. But within 45 minutes, we had blue skies again and the storm seemed to be in the direction the weather was moving so we risked it. Although we saw a few lighting forks on our way.
Back at the house, I did last-minute food prep while Richard started to get the TV and box going. We are fortunate that we are still able to get the Sky TV satellite footprint here, which means that we can pick up standard free to air BBC, ITV and Channel 4 channels. You used to be able to get it as far down as Spain, but the Sky wised up and decided that they weren’t going to provide free TV and changed the satellite coverage.
Richard called me to step outside – it was pitch black, although we could see a lot of lightening in the distance. From quite near, we could hear a “Whoooooo”. Then another “Whooooo”. This went on for about 30 seconds, until we heard “Whooooo” and then “Wh whoo whoo” – this latter being a bit wobbly. Two tawny owls, how lovely. It was too dark to see them though. Many years ago, I stepped out on to the balcony at 6am as it was getting light, and spooked an owl in the tree outside and had a great view as it flew past me. Richard decided the wobbly whooo was the female, and imitated it, although he sounded more like Les Dennis impersonating Mavis from Coronation St.
We settled down to watch Strictly, and I have to say, there were some great routines and good scores for Week 1. In the middle of one routine, Richard suddenly pointed, and I thought he was pointing at the TV. Eventually, I realised what he was pointing at an enormous spider must have come out of our wood store by the stove, and was now sitting on the wall by the fireplace. Now I know that spiders are good in the house, they catch and eat flies and wasps etc, but I was also happy to let this one out of the window (I never kill them). R said leave it until the end of the routine but of course, he (the spider not Richard) moved from his fireplace spot and we couldn’t scoop him up after that. I joked Jaws would come back for the scoring – and actually – he did!!
As we went to bed, I joked that I hoped Jaws wouldn’t join us during the night. Instead, we had a kamikaze fly who buzzed around inside a lampshade, causing an enormous racket. We finally got rid of that one. Then, as peace descended – squeak, squeak, squeeeeaaak from just outside the bedroom window. We checked on YouTube, and think it was a Little owl. We couldn’t see it, but how lovely to hear it.
No sign of Jaws this morning, but the paraphernalia is ready to help him outside. And on reflection, I have decided I should him Octopussy, although Octopussy was female. And this time, I think Richard will get the pun.