Yesterday morning a Green Lynx spider attacked the last of the three Zipper spiders who had webs on the kitchen side of the cabin. I saw a commotion out of the corner of my eye but it was still dark and I didn’t quite catch on to what was happening, and by the time I did, and it was light, the battle was over, and the Green Lynx was sucking the Zipper’s juices.

Green Lynx spiders are stalking spiders. They can use a line to travel from place to place, but they weave no webs and are said to be incredibly fast.

The Zipper deflated slowly as the Green Lynx sucked her dry. There were three very small spiders in attendance on the Zipper’s slowly deteriorating web. I don’t know what they were. One seemed to have come from a discarded skin of itself. They are all three visible in the top image.

This is just before the Green Lynx was done feasting. I had just found out they can spit their venom, and she was beginning to show signs that she noticed me there. My camera has only a 4x zoom, so I was obliged to get fairly close.

Thirty-six hours after she overcame the Zipper, the Lynx let go of the Zipper spider’s empty body. One of the tiny spiders is there on the ground with the body.

Spiders have a peculiarly intimate relationship with their food. It is eaten in an embrace. I read in Arthur Koestler that at one point spiders were evolving a brain— which explains how smart they seem to be— but that the brain was growing on either side of their alimentary canal and began choking it off. The brain had to stop growing and from then on spiders were obliged to drink their food. There’s an unwritten Just So Story in there somewhere!

(Zipper: 3 to 4 inches. Lynx: 2 to 3 inches)