The other night I checked out the waste can outside the door to Walkabout Studios, otherwise known as the Magic Bucket of Variety (the can, not the studios,) to find that it had snagged yet another capture. This one was a small-ish wolf spider (Genus Lycosidae) and I noticed as I tipped it out that it looked a little odd. A closer inspection told me why, and once again I got the camera in hand.
This is pretty small, overall length in leg spread less than 30mm, so the fuzzy bits on her abdomen took fairly high magnification to see clearly, in this case the reversed Mamiya 45mm. Yes, they’re her newborns, just two of them, though a closer inspection of the can told me that a lot more of them were scattered around within, so I left it upside-down in the yard and set the few items of trash that had been within alongside it, so they could all escape. The image above is full-frame, though what we find when we crop in close is much better.
Awwwwww! Lookit those huge eyes! They’re like real-life Lucas the Spider!
The credit for this goes to the big round custom softbox, and by chance getting the right angle to reflect from the eyes so distinctly. Most times, the young riding their mother are so thick and oriented for protection, so you mostly see the abdomens and nothing else, but that’s hard to do with just two siblings.
Still, the Magic Bucket was almost responsible for starving an entire family, so I still need to keep checking it routinely. I suppose I could just use a lidded version, but then what would I do for new content?
LATE BREAKING NEWS: I set this aside to post a little later on today, and checked the Magic Bucket in passing:
Yes, another crayfish. I mean, what the hell, man?
Feisty one, too.
Earlier, I thought that perhaps critters were getting caught in the corner between the house and the latticework that sits above the Magic Bucket (see here,) crawling through the lattice and dropping into the can. However, I had a couple of lightweight items sitting on the ledge that runs beside the steps and these had been knocked over, so there’s evidence that this one crawled all the way along that ledge. Still can’t answer why, and I haven’t seen it happen, so it remains a mystery.