Daddy Long Legs

As you know, for the past month my life has been pretty boring.  Since the accident, all I do all day is watch movies and play on Al Gore's internets.  I'm not complaining, mind you.  It's better than the alternative.

I  was sitting here the keyboard at 4:30 AM (you need to get up early to sit and do nothing all day if you expect to get anything done) and my daddy long legs buddy came trotting by.  He climbed up on my laptop's keyboard, waved a long leg hello to me, and trotted off.  What an odd creature.

It seems he wanted me to open this small bottle of Tabasco sauce sitting on the table for him.  He must be tired of bland ol' aphids and wanted to spice them up a bit.

So, not having anything else to do, I googled him to see if I could learn anything about these spiders.  Well, the first thing I learned is that they are not spiders.  They have eight legs and are arachnids, but are not spiders.  They don't have venomous fangs, and they don't build webs.  Well, what kind of insects are they then?   They're not insects either.  They're from the arachnid group Opiliones, and commonly called Harvestmen because they show up in large numbers at harvest time in the fall.  They eat aphids and other small insects and spiders, chewing them up outside their bodies and sucking up the liquids.

Ewwww.

This seems to be an extremely good year for daddy long legs.  We have a bumper crop of them here in our unabomber cabin.  They suddenly appeared here about a week ago.  I've always found them to be very cute and friendly.  If they had fur, perhaps even cuddly.

Yesterday turned out to be a yucky day here in Bleecker.  It was NOT sunny and 74 degrees as forecast.  It was 60 degrees tops, and cloudy and gray.  Pam wasn't feeling well either, so we never went out for a foliage drive and I was cabin bound yet again.  Today, however, we're going to a BBQ at a friend's place here in Bleecker.  I'm looking forward to getting out of here, even for a little bit.  Only one more month to go and hopefully I'll have this damned neck brace off and I can drive and be somewhat active again.

I'm over the flu or whatever bug I had, so today I'm thinking I might get back to my book about our travels on Drift Away.  The book is almost half finished.  Since I'm half finished with being house bound, I'd better get my butt in gear.