The Spindlies Revealed

Look upon the face of evil.

According to the Berkely site upon which I found this picture, they are CELLAR SPIDERS.

To wit:

Pholcus phalangioides
Family Pholcidae
"Daddy long-legs," "cellar spider"

The common synanthropic cellar spiders in California are European invasives, native pholcids are much smaller. Pholcus can be distinguished from Holocnemus by the grey/brown concolorous abdomen. Their webs are irregular tangles.

Hey, thanks Europe. We save your asses in two World Wars, and you dump your extra cellar spiders in our laps by way of gratitude.

I should also point out that, since I don't live in a cellar, these spiders have taken a collective wrong turn. I do notice them down in the laundry room. Perhaps the spindlies down there kicked out a group of them, and they've resettled elsewhere, a la Khan in Star Trek II, or Australians.

I've blown the lid off this mystery. Now that I know they're cellar spiders, they can no longer hide in the shadows under an assumed identity. (I mean really... "spindlies?" Who comes up with this shit?)

And, thanks to global warming, it hasn't gotten cold enough in LA for them to hibernate or die or whatever the fuck it is spiders do during the winter time. It's almost December, and I'm dealing with a spider plague. At least in Chicago, I could count on (snow on the ground) = (don't have to deal with spiders for the most part). Around here, it's all spiders, all the time. Oh, how I suffer for my art.

I have seen the depths of villainy, and it is in the face of the cellar spider.

Also... what the fuck do they eat? Microbes?