I'm watching this amazing thing right now in my server room. I came up here when I got home from work to check on a file I'd been downloading. I was just sitting at the computer when all of a sudden I hear this scary buzzing sound coming from next to me. I jumped up and looked down and saw this big scary bumblebee crawling on one of my external hard drives. I've heard rumors that bumblebees don't sting, but it was big and scary and only 2 feet away, so I backed away and quickly found a container I could use to trap it and take it outside. Then I called Fishy to see if he had any ideas about how such a beast got into the house, let alone the server room.
Then, just as I was explaining things to Fishy, I realized that the bee was moving strangely. And then I saw the spider. A small little spider crawling on top of the bee. And next thing I knew, the spider had essentially swung the bee over its back and was dragging it away. The bee was trying to crawl in the opposite direction, but without luck. The interesting thing was that other than that initial buzzing that got my attention, it didn't really flap its wings again, or even seem to try all that hard to get away, which led me to think that perhaps the spider had poisoned it to paralyze it. They struggled back and forth for a while. At one point the spider grabbed hold of a nearby Hershey's kiss wrapper, as if to prevent itself from being dragged away, but of course the wrapper just got dragged along with it, and now I think they've been webbed together. I wasn't sure at first who would win, but its clear at this point that the spider is the victor. This all started over an hour ago, and although the bee can still move a little of its own free will, it's not going anywhere. Still, I've been all but mesmerized by it for the last 60 minutes. I told Fishy all we need now is James Earl Jones doing a voiceover for the PBS "When Spiders Attack" special.
My intial reaction to scoop up the bee and take him outside suddenly became more complicated. Should I help the bee escape the spider? The bee is clearly the victim here. But the spider is probably hungry too, and what if this spider needs this bee to survive so that it can go on and kill the other bees in my house (I still don't know how Mr. Bumbles got in here, after all!) In the end, I decided to do nothing. I mean, if this had been a little kid who was trying to kill bees, I would have helped the bees. But this was a spider who depends on this sort of thing for its survival. And the bee had invaded my house, after all! Any other animal whose home had been invaded would have fought off or killed such an intruder. I felt a little like a nature photographer must feel watching a cheetah take down a gazelle. Do I help the poor gazelle? Or let nature take its course?
So now I'm nervous about this spider. Fishy suggested that I take pictures (mostly because he wanted to see), and I'll post it as soon as I get a chance to upload the photo, but the spider looks rather striking. (I wish I still had the macro lens I rented for the Philly flower show this year!) I'm a little scared to be living around a tiny little spider that can take down a big bumblebee. I already checked the web (no pun intended. haha) and it's not a brown recluse (I'm pretty sure), but I don't know whether it's dangerous to humans or not, so I'm hoping someone will recognize the sucker (again, no pun intended. hahaha) and tell me what it is, and whether I should move out of my house until it's gone.
UPDATE: looks like it's a cobweb spider. See here for comparison.
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