Mask
Image apropos of nothing in the post, except that if I have to spend an embarrassing 2 days trying to learn to load an image, it might as well be something that gives me deep joy. Now that I’ve figured it out (sort of—you can see that the title font is still quite unpleasant; I’m not sure my template, “Metrosexual” or “Chelsea” or whatever it is, allows me to choose, and I haven’t got time for that now), I can report definitively that there’s nothing wrong with the platform. Something’s definitely wrong with me.
And all this fussing only for an inconsequential little update…
Alas, I was overoptimistic. The spider Mae West turns out not to be a European garden spider, but an American (not European) house (not Garden) spider (well, duh—a very tenuous basis for my optimism). Also she is a cobweb weaver, not an orb weaver, also substandard (the helpful Western Exterminator Company site confirms that cobwebs lack symmetry). Finally, she is puny; she will grow/has grown to be only the size of a fat pea, not a grape. I checked, though—Mae West was no more than 5' tall, so the spider Mae West is not inaptly named. I fed her a moth larva yesterday, much to our mutual satisfaction.
There is also, at a judicious distance from this creature, a second spider, last observed taking her ease near a neat package that I fervently hope is an ex-earwig (except that would mean that an earwig got into the house). Even though she is equally humble in looks and abilities, I have decided to name her the spider Lady Florence Paget, after a Victorian bombshell who was known as the Pocket Venus. You make do with what you have.
PS—I have put a brave face on it, but... The helpful Western Exterminator Company site also notes that other cobweb weavers include the ogre-faced stick spider. I can’t help feeling a little regretful that, if I am to be denied European garden spiders and I must have cobwebs, I cannot have ogre-faced stick spiders.