By Ms. Sherry L. Roberts

My first year with a full-blown vegetable garden, and it has brought a plethora of interesting insects. One such was a jumping spider, about one half the size of the fly standing beside it upon the wooden railing of the raised vegetable garden.

The spider walked to close in on the fly and the fly backed away each time but still standing upon the rail. The spider tried once to “jump” it, but the fly hopped up and landed a good 5 inches away. The spider tried another tactic: “Why not try to walk BEHIND the fly where those enormous compound eyes cannot see me?” So the spider slowly moved in to circle in the direction of the back of the fly, while all the time watching the fly. The fly, suddenly and shockingly, sped off into the sky, only to circle back, dive-bomb the spider’s back instantaneously, then land, nonchalantly, back onto the railing beside the spider. The spider was shocked, it was clear. It gave up and retreated back beneath the zucchini leaf, leaving the fly to bask in the warm sun of a summer morning.

Published by Los Angeles Audubon Society, Western Tanager, Sep-Oct 2020, Vol. 87 No. 1.