Fauna, Fun

Spider celebrates Halloween and #Arachtober under a blue moon

October used to be the month for beer, but Oktoberfest is so yesterday. Now it’s 31 days of posting creepy — and sometimes adorable — eight-legged things on social media.

#Arachtober celebrates arachnids. A quick search lists 11 orders of arachnids, including scorpions; mites and ticks; harvestmen; pseudoscorpions; whipscorpions; solpugids; and spiders, but #Arachtober (at least on my timeline) means spiders.

Twitter can be a dark, dark place, but if you follow the right accounts it can light up your day. Or yeah, just maybe give you nightmares about something other than the election, or COVID, or an invasion of horribly stinky fungi.

For example, who knew that spiders drink water with their toes?

SERIOUSLY. Watch the video. Now I’m having second thoughts about leaving a glass of water on my nightstand.

Or that little earnest furry ones take refuge in jalapeno plants?

Or that some of them act like a miniature Abominable Snowman?

This one kinda looks like a skeleton biker dude. Even better, since he took up residence on the backyard orange table, he’s the perfect Halloween #Arachtober shot.

spinybacked orbweaver waving his web

Enjoy the last day of sunlight after 5 p.m. until next spring, and remember to howl under the Halloween Blue Moon. The last blue moon on Halloween was 76 years ago, so you could say they only happen…well…once in a blue moon.