Spiders, Snakes, and Gators

The Delta has quite a large variety of exotic critters. I took apart an entertainment center to move to my house and, while putting pieces of it in my trunk, there was a large hairy spider crawling on the pieces! This wasn't your normal sized house spider. No, the diameter of its belly (?) was about 2 inches and you could see all of the hairs on it. Luckily, the windshield scraper came in handy.

Today I was at the high school for an all day science workshop and one of the coaches came by to get the science teachers. He had seen a black widow spider in the field house. Three of us go out with a glass jar to the door to the field house. Sure enough, there was a small black spider near the edge of the door and the frame. One of the science teachers was then able to put the jar over the spider and the coach used a paint scraper to tap her into the jar. Once in, we saw the red hourglass on her belly. I refer to it as female because only female black widows have the hourglass on the bottom.

Earlier in the day, we were discussing the teaching of the concept of population and it came up that there were alligators in southeast Arkansas. This makes sense given our proximity to the Mississippi river. Supposedly there is an area in the lake that I live on where there are a few gators living.

On Friday, just in passing, we were told that snakes were common around and in our school buildings. They've found small rattlesnakes over at the high school and supposedly one teacher entered a room to find one sunning itself in front of the window.

I don't mean to scare y'all with any of these stories. It's just that I don't have much else to write about right now. My inservice days having been going well, but if I reported on those, then you might get a bit bored. Reptiles and spiders are much more exciting.