The most problematic of these flaws is the relatively "escape proof" design of the "roof" of the enclosure. I designed the roof to allow for airflow while minimizing routes of escape for "spider food" like crickets and flies. The problem here is that once egg sacs from female spiders begin to hatch, the "spiderlings" aren't able to wander far from their place of birth and large numbers remain concentrated in the corners of the house. At one point in the summer, I had about 3 egg sacs hatch at once, which yielded a couple of hundred baby spiders in the Spider House. It was kind of crowded in there for a while. But in this kind of situation, spiderlings ultimately became easy prey for the adults in the house, which is kind of unfortunate. I know from experience that if egg sacs hatch in an enclosure with air holes that are a decent size (big enough for the babies to exit, but small enough to keep the adults in), the spiderlings will eventually stray outside of the enclosure. Along the way, they leave tons and tons of little webs behind, coating the outside walls of the enclosure. It sounds creepy, but it's pretty cool.
A few weeks ago, I went kind of crazy catching funnel weavers when I found a whole slew of them hiding in a large plant in our front yard. A couple of these spiders ultimately emerged as the dominant residents of the Spider House, spinning webs all through the various levels of the enclosure and making short work of their main competition, which were the large brown and red garden spiders. I took a picture of the web network in the Spider House as it looks today, but after a couple of months of spider activity, one might well imagine that the scene is pretty messy and nasty.
I probably could have maintained the Spider House a bit longer, but there are still quite a few unhatched egg sacs left and I figure that if I leave the enclosure open and effectively end the experiment for now, I will let a few hundred baby spiders free. This way, I’ll have some time to reflect on the lessons learned from this year's Spider House so that next year's experience is even better.
A view from the inside (roof) of the Spider House.
Those little dots are baby spiders...
and, yes, they are alive!
