I had a visit today from my little friend Mr Lizard. He loves hoyas too.
Patti
This message was edited Aug 20, 2007 4:23 PM
Hoya bilobata and lizzard
I swear my lizards keep my plants clean of bugs!!!! Don't you love them!!!?
How cute! Did you get any closeups? I wish we had garden lizards here, frogs occasionally, but no lizards. Plenty of spiders, I suppose they keep the plants bug free too - there is a Daddy long legs living in one of my carnosas, he runs away up the side of the house everytime I water but he always comes back.
This message was edited Aug 20, 2007 12:37 PM
Your little friend is worth his weight in gold for the insects he will eat. Hang onto him! :D
What a cute little guy. I have a couple living in the GH along with a not so cute toad, who scares the heck out of me everytime I go in there. He has dug himself a nice little hole right underneath the hose to the mister. I still have lots of spiders in the GH though, so I better tell them to get busy or start paying some rent.
They are cute little buggers. We have these orange crab like spiders here. I look at them from a distance. I am not a big fan of spiders. I can actually say that is one creature I can live without.
Patti
Ewww, and being orange just makes them all the creepier. I don't care for spiders much either, but I do like watching the tarantula's, and I would rather have them in the GH than the little one's that I can't see.
I don't blame him, that is a beautiful plat.
Congratulations Patti!
My area is starting to have issues with Black Widow Spiders, more than ever before! An exterminator told my brother that he had enough at his house for it to be considered an "infestation"...Does anyone know what eats them? I would bet that alot of critters, like lizards for example, stay away from the highly venomous spiders.
you think that's a lizard? check out what I found in my hoya KQ today........
just jokin' ya! this is my daughters bearded dragon. couldn't resist... isn't he a doll :~)
God bless, -joanne
Holy Lizard Lips Batman, I was gonna say ... what the heck is a lizard doing in Western Oregon! But, I see, he's an indoor pet - what a cute little critter! Does he try and eat your plants?
Bhavana34, predators do exist for the black widow. Sometimes parasites attack the egg sacs. The adult spiders are eaten by some species of wasps like the blue mud dauber and the spider wasp.
Joanne, that is a really cool dragon. Great way to keep the pest off your hoya's ..
Bhavana we have ALOT of blackwidow spiders around. You have to really keep on top of your spraying, or they will take over. That is one spider that gives me the creepy crawlers.
Well, please don't tell me they are likely to come indoors...my brother's exterminator says the most common place to find them is under aluminum or vinyl siding, but recently he found one in his garage, which is a little too close to indoors for me. They also like sheds and outside electrical boxes and any dark area that does not get disturbed on a regular basis. I wonder why birds don't eat them? They eat other spiders.
I love all God's creatures, but the spider scares the heck out of me and I don't think that will ever change. Now where can I get blue mud dauber and spider wasps?
Bhavana34,
Here's are a couple of links with some info on the blue mud dauber:
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/view_question.php?id=743
http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/cimg334.html
If black widows are present in your area, you probably have blue mud daubers, too.
cicada, wow, I wish I hadn't scraped those mud dauber nests off the house, I'd take a picture to show you - eek! We were wondering what the heck built them! Not sure about the other wasp, but not only have I seen the mud duaber "nests", I have seen the actual wasps too. I would imagine it works both ways - if mud duabers are in my area, then their favorite food, the black widow, is definately here too....
Kind of interesting (and creepy) how they entomb the spiders in the mud nest to feed their young... at least when I scraped the nests off the house, they had holes in them and were just empty shells, so the baby wasps had already come out. Thanks for the info, very fascinating!
Ann, no he does not eat the plants. He is one of 3 my daughter owns. They are what she wanted and got for her birthday last month. This guy is too big to be left on the plants too long, he can rip off leaves with little effort but the baby, only 10" long, will go from basket to basket if we let her.
Tami, We don't have many black widows here, I have only seen one in my life, but we have hobo spiders that are slightly venemous. BUT the ones I REALY hate are called
'common house spiders'. THey are HUGE (for me :~) about the size of a silver dollar (not the susan b anthony one but a real silver dollar) and they are FAST FAST FAST!!!!
They should have a fitting name that makes them sound bad,like...................... vampire bat princess spiders! HA
-joanne
Joanne, I think I can do without the speedy gonzales spiders. They are creepy enough without having to see them crawl around like they just got back from starbucks. Are they in your house?
Tammy, try as I might, they do seem to like it inside. I was born and raised on the coast where there are no such spiders so when I moved to the valley it was the first and only thing that I didn't like!
The first time I saw one the DH was working graveyard. I spent all night sitting up holding a can of Raid and wearing my steel toed boots:~) Now I capture them!
My Dad is a hunter (all the men in the family are and a few of the women). He asked me why I had spiders in the jar outside the door and I told him, " you have your trophies and I have mine". I also think it's a deterrent for the other spiders wanting to get inside.... but I do tell myself lots of things to make it easier to sleep at night :~)
-sweet dreams, -joanne
I have 4 brothers, growing up what one didn't think of to torture me, another one would. A few of their more memorable tricks were releasing spiders they captured elsewhere into my bedroom, or letting snakes go under the bathroom door when I was in there. I would go into my bedroom and there'd be an upside-down dixie cup on my dresser - of course I would pick it up and guess what would be under it??? Maybe a big black hairy jumping spider? No spider moves faster than them!!! Never a dull moment.
Funny joanne should mention no spiders on the coast, because when I lived near the ocean here in the east, I noticed very very few spiders also, even in a very old house I lived in. I wonder why that is. Plenty of other creepy crawlys, especially giant trillion legged centipede type bugs that move faster than any spider could ever hope to...but no spiders....
Bhavana, you poor thing! I think I could do physical harm to anyone who tortured someone like that. we had spiders on the coast, just not these huge FAST ones! And I agree with you, not as many. I think it must be the cooler temps. -joanne
I have only one brother and 4 sisters. My brother and I shared a room when we were young. I still don't know how he did it but somehow tied a string to a box that was under my bed. He would pull it and the box would hit something and he would tell me there was a squirrel under my bed, I begged and begged to jump over to his bed but he wouldn't let me. So there was nothing left to do but scream for Mom and get him in trouble. :) I never did catch on and he did it several times. We had some good times in that room, I even taught him to cook in my easy bake oven !! Oh yes he did learn how to knit as well and brought it to school with him..... LOL, Should I have told him that he would be made fun of .... Nope Retaliation is a good thing. The poor guy never did marry or have children. I think us girls did some permanent damage...
Well, I must admit that there were times when I was bigger and stronger than some of my brothers, and that they probably did not torture me without reason....the squirrel under the bed thing is a good one, I must admit!