Frog Hunt …
Hmmm, what’s this I see. Rather deadly to me. Better keep still a while or I might no longer be.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
A huntsman spider, probably female, hanging motionless – swaying, apparently lifeless – above something dark beneath.
Ooh, that looks dangerous. I’ll just tuck in here a while. Hope my mates have the good sense to stay out of this one’s way.
Something tethered beneath, a last breath, a final struggle against the bonds of inevitability.
I see said the frog, who could probably see very well indeed. Well enough to know not to go that way, this time.
Yes, cockroach, caught out by her need to constantly move. Which at other times would serve her well, but the huntsman hunts by that very need – of others to move, across her carefully laid trip threads. She feels them …
The frog hunts differently, by sitting still enough to see in the dark with their big eyes anything that moves. Each hunter has its ways. The frog’s way is probably less dramatic but equally poised.
The ‘coup de grace’. Until this the spider was hanging there apparently lifeless, swaying in the breeze, maybe exhausted from the cold with little to eat, gathering her energy to extract the life from her prey.
And nobody noticed this snail, going about its grazing in the dead of night. No hunter this one.
Hunter or hunted, there is more to the story unfolding on the crucifix orchid in the dead of Brisbane’s winter.
It gets too cold for the frogs to come out some nights, but I check the crucifix orchids regularly anyway – gotta do what we enjoy.
On some nights I had been seeing other creatures, snails and recently one black cockroach. And occasionally signs of Huntsman spiders, cast off skin for instance, and this night found one feeding.
Looks like a cockroach, The cockroach perhaps. Unlucky creature, or unprepared – the huntsman senses its prey by its movement, and frogs don’t move like the cockroach.
I’ll be back … said the spider to the frog.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Nature's Place 
Your storytelling and yes, National Geographic worthy photos create for a wonderful and unique experience for the reader. A little gift, thank you Mark.
Thanks Katie. Appreciated … a gift indeed.
Worthy of National Geographic, Mark.
The images did induce some PTSD though over an incident I am completely ashamed about. We once found a very emaciated huntsman in our house. We popped it in a jar and found a dead insect for it hoping to feed it up before releading it to the garden. It wasn’t interested in it. Not longer after we caught a cockroach inside (not our proudest moment) and then we put that in the jar. Moments after, the huntsman underwent a complete transformation, puffed itself up into this majestic beast, overwhelmed the cockroach and then consumed it. I’ll never forget that sight and our role in the death of that poor cockroach. I don’t know why I was so surprised by the result.
Thanks Tracy. We do what we do, and move on. Can’t be holding, or beholden, to the past. It accumulates and eventually just burdens us, as you say. Anyone who experiments at all will experiment with (human) nature, it’s how we find our limits.
But yes, a spider has no interest in dead food. No fool, the spider.
Yes, I do believe That my partner and I exceeded our limit on that occasion.
Thank you, Mark.
Great macro shots !
Have a lovely week and many greets,
Rudi
Thanks Rudi.
Great post, Mark! Thank you for sharing! :)
Thanks Laura, a pleasure.
Nature’s storyteller!
Nature is its own storyteller, isn’t it. We might observe and record a little of it.
Though if we observe close and long enough we might come to ‘know thyself’ in it.