The Charlottes are coming!

For those who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, don't wait a minute longer. There are no less than 20 citations for White's remarkable work in the library catalog - all the way from the original book to tapes, CDs, DVDs and an assortment of take-offs on Wilbur-the-Pig, the main character in the Charlotte's adventure.

About two weeks ago, my wife, Sue, called me from tending her seedlings on our back porch deck, "Jim! Come out here, quick! There are tiny Charlottes all over the place!"

Sure enough, when I rushed out to see what was going on, there they were: hundreds of tiny orb-weaver spiders ballooning and slowly crawling along strands of silk scattered all over the back porch. They all originated from the beautiful silken egg capsule mom left in the wood shed just before she died last fall.

Most babies were still carrying a tiny egg sack attached to their abdomen to keep them alive long enough to build their own tiny silken orb and capture their first food - a gnat or fruit fly. The ones that built a snare high above human traffic, where tiny insects would bump into the orb web, were already growing bigger and fatter.

If you have curious children in your home, you don't need to read about Charlotte and what she eats; your kids will let you know. "Hey Mom! Look at all the flies, bees, wasps, bugs (and other assorted creatures) in this spider web!" And so it will go, all summer long. Charlotte will continue catching unwanted insects, and every one she eats helps her to grow a little more.

If you're really lucky, you may observe the mating ritual of Charlotte and her tiny partner, who is about one-tenth her size, with longer legs and a tiny abdomen compared to the female. There are also a pair of "boxing gloves" (pedipalps) on the front of the head region. In spiders, they are mating organs used to transfer sperm to his lady-love, which takes enormous subtlety.

The male moves onto the silken orb cautiously by holding the first line of her snare and plucking it like a guitar string, probably singing, "Yoo-hoo! Here I am!" over and over, sometimes for hours on end.

Again and again she rushes out to see what has caused her trip-line to move, at which the male scurries away. Finally, she tires of the dry runs, and he becomes bold enough to walk across the web and take up a position beneath her.

That's when his pedipalps come into play. The sperm is in the "glove" which he now slides into the epigynum of the female, a slot on her underside; and does that take finesse... Once he's succeeded in transferring sperm his job is done, and usually - so is his life - the chances of his moving out of her orb web without being gobbled up are little-to-none.

As the summer rolls on, the female's abdomen swells larger and larger as her next generation of spiders form in eggs. By the time insects are almost gone at the beginning of fall, Charlotte leaves her snare, laboriously crawls to a sheltered place and begins to make the silken bowl that will hold her eggs safely through winter.

When she finishes the beautiful golden purse containing about 200 eggs, she often attaches herself to it and dies, perhaps leaving her body to hide the egg sack, or for her children to feed on when they hatch the next summer.

All those tiny Charlottes building orb web snares on your house, barn, garage, porch and other places will eliminate hosts of insects - many of which you'd rather not have around. While she, in her turn, asks no thanks, just a place to live out her life and perhaps some day leave you a message like her namesake did; not "Some Pig!" but perhaps, "Thank you!"