Happy Halloween! I find this next statistic a little difficult to wrap my mind around. In the past 19 years that I’ve been writing my column, I’ve only ever published a column on Halloween Day on one occasion. It was all the way back in 1998 — and the topic was that bone-chilling species of bird called the double-crested cormorant.
So, to celebrate the theme of the season, I decided to share two photos with you. The first is a photo of a beautiful spider that I encountered while on vacation on Prince Edward Island. This particular spider had set up shop near the porch light. It wove a beautiful web, and was just hanging around in the late afternoon, waiting for the sun to set.
I was able to get this photo because the spider’s web is virtually invisible against the light backdrop of the pale blue siding of a house. If you look carefully, you can see three horizontal bars that represent the clapboard on the side of the house. I focused my attention on the underside of this spider, because I had never seen such bold and beautiful patterns of color on a spider before.
It took me a while to come up with a tentative identification of this particular specimen, but everything I found suggested that it was a barn spider (Neoscona crucifer). That name suggests that these spiders are common enough around human structures, and the reading I did confirmed that the barn spider is a species that “likes” people. Especially, it seems, our porch lights.
Barn spiders weave particularly large webs, but are themselves rather small. The females are less than an inch in length, but their webs can be larger in diameter than a large pizza. All of this webbing is designed to help the spider collect food, which may also explain the species’ affinity for porch lights. Moths and other nocturnal insects will be drawn to these lights, and the spiders will be waiting for them.
Now for the creepiest part: Like many spiders, the barn spider stores its eggs in little spherical bundles that the females produce by rolling their silk in such a manner as to produce a fluffy yellow ball. Inside this egg sack, there may be as many as 1,000 eggs, which hatch into a crawling mass of baby spiders that must go out into the world and start eating. Fear not, however, for most fall prey to wasps before they ever get big enough to weave their giant webs.
Next up, I have a photo of a bat that I found in my garage last autumn. I was in the process of cleaning up for the winter and I was shifting things around, like many a homeowner does on a regular weekend. I remember moving a sheet of aluminum flashing that I had put up to discourage squirrels, and a few moments later I found this adorable little creature hanging on the wall where the flashing had been.
This particular species of bat is called a little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). Needless to say, I was thrilled when I saw this little creature. Bats have been under siege lately and to find one in good health was a real treat for me. I felt absolutely awful that I had disturbed the bat so late in the season, but there was absolutely nothing I could to about that when I finally discovered it.
The little brown bat is one of the most common bats in all of North America. It belongs to a group called “mouse-eared bats,” which probably explains its relatively “cute” appearance. As bats go, this species is one of the easiest to think positively of. There are others, such as the ghost-faced bats, which aren’t as easy to think positively of.
I was particularly interested in this species’ scientific name, because I thought there might be a reference to Lucifer hidden in the words. What I found was that the name “myotis” is a combination of Latin words for “mouse” and “ear.” This makes sense, since we’re talking about a mouse-eared bat, right? Then I found that “lucifugus” is actually another Latin word for “nocturnal,” or “shuns daylight.”
It turns out that the name Lucifer is also related to the idea of light. However, the translation of Lucifer is “bringer of light,” whereas lucifugus means “to shun light.” Given that this is a Halloween article, I was hoping for a more nefarious connection with the bat’s name, but you don’t always get what you want.
It turns out that the little brown myotis is another species that really “likes” people. Again, it is our buildings that this particular animal makes use of. During daytime in the summer, when they are sleeping, these little creatures will roost in wood piles, barns and even in the nooks and crannies found on the exteriors of our houses. In the winter, however, these bats will seek other accommodations, including caves and abandoned mines. I have no doubt that abandoned buildings serve a similar purpose.
I hope you have a wonderful Halloween. Try to remember that even the scariest creatures of our nightmares are just trying to get by in the world. Chances are, you share your home with at least one of those beautiful animals, without even knowing it.
Live and let live!
Bill Danielson has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, and the Massachusetts State Parks. He has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 19 years and he also teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.