Today, I noticed a ginger spider sitting on my kitchen worktop hugging a lemon pip. I had squeezed lemons the night before and one pip must have popped out and I hadn’t noticed it. The worktop colour is very similar to the pip colour. Anyway, I blew on Ginger to see if Ginger was alive. Usually when you breathe on insects or spiders, they run for the hills, or dance in the breeze (of your breath). Ginger didn’t move. Is Ginger dead, I thought, or is Ginger just playing dead? I blew on Ginger again and once more for good luck. Nothing. Ginger didn’t move, neither did the pip. Are you calling my bluff? Maybe if I go away and come back again, you might not be there. I decided I would give Ginger some space. Like when a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there, would Ginger leave while no-one was there to experience Ginger’s leaving? So, I went away for a decent amount of time, about fifteen minutes, and when I returned, Lo and Behold, Ginger was indeed gone and so was the pip! Ginger took the pip and fooled me good and proper, called my bluff. Of course, it could have gone two ways for Ginger. She/he could have been bludgeoned to death while he/she played dead, or was carelessly and fatally scooped into the sink, or into a dustbin. Ginger could have met with several horrible deaths, but instead, trusted fate, took a chance, took a risk and played dead, and it paid off. A lesson to us I think. And Ginger and Lemon do go together.
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Things In My Head 
Charming story with a lesson in kindness. Thanks for posting!
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Thank you Dan.
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So WTF was a spider doing with a lemon pip?
Myopically in love?
I let the spiders run wild in my place, only disturbing their webs when they’re abandoned and dusty or when I’m expecting a visit from the rental agents.
A couple of week ago I spied what at first seemed a weird, elongated, many-legged bug on the bathroom window. Closer inspection revealed a very small spider fastened onto a cockroach that happened to be the same colour. I left them undisturbed and the spider stayed attached for three days, though it’s not so small anymore.
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Yes, spiders get up to all kinds of weird stuff. Yes, you hit it on the nail there, myopically in love! I thought the lemon pip might have been the spiders equivalent of a blow up doll, because the pip was the same size as its body. Maybe there was nutrition in the pip? Kind of like a dog gnawing at a bone. Have seen harvestmen spiders rolling up other harvestmen spiders in webs and hugging them for days on my ceiling and then suddenly and with quite sinister overtones, all traces disappearing overnight. I think the spider who ate the cockroach had a real feast that week. ‘Tastes a bit like chicken,’ he thought. Though how he would have tasted chicken I don’t know.
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I doubt it’s tasted chicken yet, but at the rate it’s growing it’ll probably be catching them in a couple of months. Then the neighbourhood dogs and cats will start disappearing. Then my blog will go off air.
We get some big ones around here you know.
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At least we know why they’re called Huntsman.
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