NATURE
Encounters With A Wolf Spider and a Harvester Ant
I’d rather hang out with butterflies and ladybugs
The Wolf Spider Encounter
My coworkers and I found a mess under the park’s group pavilion right before an event began. It wasn’t something that was easy to clean (I’ll spare you the details, but it wasn’t fun), and we didn’t have much time. We did what we could, and then I had the brilliant idea of placing a garbage can over what was left.
Hide that spot until we have more time…
There was a large brown wolf spider under the garbage can. I watched it run off and forgot about it since we still had a lot to do.
A few minutes later, one of our volunteers came up to me, saying, “Hold still. You have a hitchhiker.” She reached toward my shoulder to shoo it away. I was thinking it was something nice, like a ladybug.
It wasn’t a ladybug. I was okay until she said the words, “You have a very large spider…” and I remembered the wolf spider that I thought had run off. Instead, it had climbed up my leg, up my shirt, and was sitting on my shoulder.
What happened next wasn’t very graceful or dignified on my part, but the spider lived and so did I. Thankfully, the volunteer saw it before…
