Corona Lockdown Sex on the Beach

Corona Lockdown

Sex on the Beach

Black Widow spider’s language of love

Vancouver Island west coast full of log-strewn beaches

Dating on the Web

eduction of widows can be dangerous.  Watch out, Kenny.  The male can end up lunch instead of lover.  

The female builds a messy-stranded cobweb as a trap and stays on it until fully mature, then perfumes the web’s silk with pheromones.  Pheromones, like Kenny washes off and cannot smell.  The scent stimulates the male’s built-in GPS.  Up to 21 males may show up within a few hours, but 7 is more typical.  

Female pheromone tells whether she’s mated before, whether or not she’s hungry.  If it’s Suzie’s, she’s probably hungry, though she doesn’t prefer human meat.  

The risk of males being cannibalized is highest before sex.  On the web, males communicate through dance moves, e.g. “whisper dance, slowly vibrating web’s strings demonstrates “I’m here, but I’m not a prey.” Kenny’s good at that one.   Otherwise he might get eaten before he can mate by birds, wasps, ants, other spiders.  Birds, wasps and ants like Kenny.   More than 80% die while searching.  The first male to mate with a widow can block off her reproductive track, thwarting rivals.  Suzie has already had two offspring.  

Black widow spider genitalia is amazing:  pedipalps stick out in front of the face.  She deposits sperm-containing fluid onto a special web, then uses pedipalps to suck it up.  Both sexes have pedipalps, but only the male’s function like turkey basters.  The tip is corkscrew-shaped and breaks off, forming a plug, preventing other males from mating.  Kenny’s tip is corkscrew-shaped and broke off forming a plug.  It not only prevents other males from mating, it gets in HIS way.

Web Wars

Males cut out pieces, bundling them with their own silk

At Tsawout First Nation, Island View Beach, Cordova Spit

Every square yard of driftwood covered

Sand hosts 2 – 3 females

Professor set up cages

Controls empty

Others had webs with spiders removed

Placed males inside some cages, gave them an hour, then took them out

In others, she snipped webs with scissors

She counted how many wild males showed up in sticky traps

Intact and human-snipped webs equally attractive

Webs altered by males attracted 1/3 as many rivals

The Tools of Seduction

Potency of female pheromones

One pheromone initiates full courtship display without female spider

One compound also found on redback spider

Spiders responded almost as strongly to redback pheromone as silk from black widow

N-3-methylbutanoyl-0-methylpropanoyl-L-serine methel ester MB-MP-S

Coretta Mae King black widow, former wife of Untouchable MLK

Spent a month with him in India, from Bombay to Kerala.  Did she eat her untouchable Spiderman?  She didn’t kill him.  We’re all eating his dream.

Malawi just elected a president who used to be the head pastor of the Malawi Assemblies of God.  The BBC headline says he “argued with God”.  Many Malawi widows might be out to get him.

Last night I watched the premiere of “The Great 14th”, a biography of the Dalai Lama.  Very inspiring.  He said he was “only a little bit superstitious”.  It opened in Tibet when he was first identified as a toddler, but they didn’t show him.  When he was 16 they made him go to Beijing.  Then in 1959 in black and white, he escaped to South Tibet and from there to India.  He was well received there and soon built a temple in Dharamsala.  There are now 500 monks there.  They showed him in Sweden receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.  I know someone on Vancouver Island who had tea with him when he was on his way to Sweden and didn’t even know who he was.  In South Africa with Mandela.  He was good friends with George Bush.  He appointed someone to take over his political duties when he was 65 and says he is now the “senior advisor”.   

I listened to David Loy talk about the ecosattva path.  As a collective, Buddhists will have to take action against climate change and toxic pollution.  I’m reading The Great Awakening: a Buddhist Social Theory.  The last chapter is “Loving the World as our Own Body: the Nondualist Ethics of Taoism, Buddhism and Deep Ecology”. June 30, 2020

Finished the book last night.  Loy was at Maui with Robert Aitken, now lives in Japan with his son and presumably Japanese wife.  

Drinking chai made with goat milk, sweetened with honey.  Yum!   

Ken finished his exam.  Best yet, he says.  

Tami is finalizing the loan.  Mark is ready to go.  I may have to drive to Coupeville to fill out the water form which expired.  Had lamb curry for lunch.  

Canada Day

Just spoke with Ken.  He will have the trailer hitch installed Friday then come down maybe Saturday.  The 24th they will be on retreat with England.  He was going to cancel the trip with John but I said he could park Shorty and go up the Dempster in the Mazda and stay at a motel in Tuktoyaktuk. 

Ecosattva Path

I read A WILD LOVE for the WORLD by JOANNA MACY, about what it means to be human at this moment in time, to be passionate about the planet and everything on it.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men,and when he devotes himself helpfullyto all life that is in need of help.- Albert Schweitzer

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day,he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.But if he spends his days as a speculator,shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time,he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.- Henry David Thoreau

God has cared for these trees,saved them from drought, disease, avalanches,and a thousand tempests and floods.But he cannot save them from fools.- John Muir

Also, SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY by Leslie Sponsel.

Anthropologist Leslie Sponsel uses “spiritual ecology” to recognize the interweaving of nature and spirituality. “Spiritual ecology” refers to “the diverse, complex, and dynamic arena of intellectual and practical activities at the interface between religions and spiritualities on the one hand, and, on the other, ecologies, environments, and environmentalism from indigenous peoples as well as scientific and theological knowledge of nature. This allows for respect of peoples’ wisdom who lived with the land for generations as well as scientific understandings of the Earth. It may preclude clergy dismissing the spirituality of environmentalists or environmental scientists or anthropologists rejecting indigenous people as the “first ecologists”, engaged in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue and shared practices years ago.

What does this have to do with cannibalistic black widows?  If widows, whether spiders, human or beastly, ate their lovers, that would relieve Gaia of many of the beings that are overheating her.  The Corona virus is also relieving traffic and pollution.  The “Chinese” virus has kept this old geezer from visiting Canada for a year and a half.  And this widow lost several pounds during the Lockdown, not being able to dine at restaurants and cafes but eating her own cooking.