Beatrice

Well, Beatrice died. She was a good spider, but I guess her time was up. I've done some research and it appears that female black widows can live for up to a year and a half. We captured her in Oct and she was fairly large then so maybe it was old age. It was quite strange though because she just molted last week. Seems odd that she would soon after just curl up and die. I am suspicious about the bee that I captured and put into her cage two nights prior to her death. I think it was just a carpenter bee or honey bee of some kind. It wasn't aggressive so I'm pretty sure it wasn't some rogue killer bee up from CA. The bee was dead the morning after I put it in there, but that day Beatrice curled up on her log and started to die. The next moring she was belly up in the dirt. Could the bee have stung her??? I don't know and I can't seem to find the answer. In my research I did find that the Mud-Dauber Wasp (pictured below) preys on Black Widows. Interesting.

longest ride

I went out on a 127 mile ride today. It was the longest ride I have ever been on so I was very happy that it felt like we were going downhill all day. Of course, we weren't because we did a big loop, but the winds were at our back on the way back home so it helped us out on the climbs. Jay is training for a cross country adventure starting in July. It's fun to have someone to do really long rides with and since he's training really hard he is always doing really long rides. In fact, this wasn't a long day for him and he's repeating it again tomorrow. ouch! Go Jay!

lichen

I am turning into a blogger slacker these days. Nothing new is happening here though, but I have found a new interest - lichen. Its fun stuff and it's one of my favorite hike topics now-a-days. The kids get a kick out of it too because we get to talk about fire, birds, armpits, etc. The lichen above is called wolf lichen and can be used to make an irridecent brown die. Kind of cool since it's lime green. The one below is called Old Man's Beard and Derek was kind enough to demonstrate why.