Spiders may not bite, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get them to drink your blood! All you need is a sunset at the beach, hordes of mosquitoes, a spider, and some frustration to take out.
The other night, I was unwinding with an evening of wasp and bee photography at Iona beach, but the flight conditions were great for mosquitoes. They kept interrupting my shots of this lovely Tetragnatha laboriosa, so I decided to share the wealth.
Trapping the mosquito against my skin, I released it in the sweet spot of the web.
You can see the movement of the wrapping action, as I was also dragging the shutter to get some light in the darkening sky.
I was looking forward to a great splash of blood as the spider bit in!
This is about as good as it got however, but I am sure the spider will appreciate the extra protein already in liquid form.
This one is pretty cool too…
The mozzies kept biting, so I kept tossing them into the web.
I kept the spider busy wrapping up her gifts for quite a while.
When we both had had enough, I headed home, feeling itchy, but satisfied that I had at least achieved the fattening up of a cool tetragnathid.