They Hunt For Their Prey

Hairy Ground Spiders

            I told you about the well that was dug in the early days on the farm, did I not?   It served the people and animals well until the windmill could pump all the water required.   An open well is a dangerous place where animals and children could fall, so it was decided to fill it up again with the same soil that had originally been dug out before it could be used.   As this soil was a mixture of top and bottom layers, the spot where the well used to be was clearly visible and grass grew very sparsely there.   For a reason unknown to me, big hairy ground spiders occupied this spot on the farm and they were rather ferocious and would appear to chase anything that ventured on to their territory.

We children were dead scared of these creatures that would catch their prey by chasing them, but we were also very inquisitive to see them and would approach the place carefully until a spider came crawling out of it’s hole.    My sister Daphne says that they were about as big as a matchbox.   The girls would scream and we would all run home but----because I was the smallest, I would be left far behind and terrified out of my wits.   My mother would warn us time and again to stay away from the spiders and that a bite from one of them would be serious.   Fortunately no one was ever bitten so I live to tell the tale.   Someone said that they were called Roman or Wolf spiders, so I decided to see what I could find on the Internet.  

From the Internet :-“The wolf spider is a member of the Lycosidae family, the order Aranedia.   A full grown wolf spider is typically a half an inch to two inches in length; they are usually brown or grey with various stripe-like markings on their backs.   Wolf spiders are also very hairy.   The eye arrangement of the wolf spider is one of its most interesting features; they have four small eyes in the bottom row, followed by two large eyes in the middle row, and two medium eyes in the top row.   They received the name wolf spider due to an early belief that the spiders would actually hunt their prey in a group.   Some other names for the wolf spider are the ground spider and the hunting spider.   Wolf spiders do not actually make webs; instead they hunt for their meal.   They make homes by digging holes or living under rocks.   The wolf spiders will often cover their burrows with leaves or grass”.

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