Window Spider

I have a spider that has set up a web in my window inside my room just about a centimeter away from the glass. It must be a good spot because she's been there for a while. The other day I heard a loud buzzing and saw a bee or yellowjacket flying around in my room. Then I heard a "thunk" as it hit the window and got caught in the spider's web.

Game on! The spider moved quickly to bite it, while managing to avoid the stinger (I assume a yellowjacket would attempt to use its stinger. I guess I'm not sure about a bee, since delivering the sting is fatal and that would seem to defeat the point of stinging to escape a spider's web.) Anyway, after some furious buzzing, the bee succumbed to the spider's poison. The spider wrapped her new meal in a nice burrito wrapping and tucked in to a gigantic meal.

Creepy, but also pretty cool. As long as you aren't afraid of spiders.

-Mark

Slug

I made this quite a while ago. While I was still in my apartment near Lake Merritt, and before I went to jewelry school.

Its a pun... Get it? I'm going to say, for those without the terminology at the tip of their tongues. Its a slug... made of slugs! Groan! It really looks a lot like a slug, if you ask me. The picture doesn't have any scale to go by, but its the same size as a real slug too.

Let me see if I can remember. The head is 9mm Parabellum, the two main body sections are .40 S&W, the next section is 9mm Makarov and the tail is 7.62 x 39. The antennae aren't made from slugs, just copper wire.

I mentioned above that I made this a while ago, I made the body a while ago, I added the antennae later, after I learned more about soldering. I couldn't figure out how to attach the antennae using the skills I had available to me at the time. After jewelry school, it was easy. I learned something!

Anyway, I think I'll show some of the things I've made over the years on this blog. Why? Because I can.

-Mark