It has been a good year for my outdoor spiders. In one place I counted six with intertwining webs, a spider condo if you will. And I was impressed that they could sort out who got the flies and who did not, but when I checked back a couple of days later the amount of spiders was down to two, and they had moved their webs way up in a tree. Maybe communal living did not work out too well for the arachnids.
I keep checking on my remaining spiders who are growing enormous with endless strings of victims neatly lined up in long lines, with the male lurking somewhere near, but not too near so as not to annoy the female who is easily ten times his size and very cranky and has been known to eat an incautious male.
But today I saw a male get his wicked way with a female, the biggest in my flock of spiders and with the longest line of victims and therefore, I assume, the most content and easily swayed.
So now I can depend on another batch of spiders next year.