1	Golden Silk Spiders and Hurricane Warnings What we learned from them… By Marnie L Hutcheson Photographs and art work by: Marnie L Hutcheson & Vel Boyd
2	Before we get started… Golden Silk Spiders are also called Banana Spiders The banana spider exhibit at www.shadygrovetrainingcenter.com gets a lot of visitors every day during the summer months and I get lots of wonderful email from people who are fascinated with these enormous but gentle spiders. I am pleased to add this article to our exhibit. Please enjoy it! ~Marnie
3	Hurricane warnings and preparations When we heard that Hurricane Francis might be headed our way in September 2004,
4	The barn deck The second floor of the barn has a large covered deck. During the summer, you can find lots of banana spiders living there, usually 15-20 females and maybe twice that many males. We leave their webs alone so we can watch them up close, and also because they eat lots of flies that would otherwise be a problem.
5	The banana spiders… Like to make their webs between the columns, from the roof to the hand rail, and from the hand rail to the floor. They create a sort of double-decker web all around edge of the deck. The average web size is about 6 ft by 6 ft, but some are much larger.
6	There are so many banana spiders that…
7	The wasps Because there are so many banana spiders on the porch, there is a healthy wasp community nesting inside the second floor structure. They prey on both the smaller banana spiders and the insects caught in their webs.
8	The banana spiders were gone! Their webs were there, but not a single spider.
9	The wasps were gone too! My daughter hates the wasps and was very cautious when she entered the second floor. But there was not a single wasp.
10	Hurricane Francis When Hurricane Francis struck, she ripped the tops off of the trees and dropped lots of rain on us. In one day, everything changed.
11	Hurricane Jeanne One month later Hurricane Jeanne hit us with enough rain to create the 40 acre Lake Hutcheson on top of our best pasture land, and also a tornado.
12	The tornado… Ripped up huge trees and left a trail of destruction over a half mile long. It took 2 years to clean up the mess.
13	After the storms… the water began to recede and creatures began to return. By the summer of 2006, the banana spider and wasp populations were almost back to normal.
14	Now we watch the banana spiders… when a storm first appears in the Atlantic, If the banana spiders disappear, we prepare for the worst –-no matter what the weatherman is predicting.
15	Hope you will visit… www.shadygrovetrainingcenter.com Where you will find other interesting creatures and their stories. J ~Marnie and Vel