Fort Snelling State Park: Storytime & Spiders

I have to say that while Finn does not mind having the lady rangers to himself, come on, caregivers! We were the only ones here again.
This event happens every Monday morning, and you should be here. Indoor story time is for winter. This week, we learned about what to do if you should find a baby Great Horned Owl in your backyard. Personally, I found most of this story to be implausible or all-too-convenient (baby owl is found by the children of a wildlife rehabilitator), but we definitely learned from it, and Finn found it interesting.

Later, after we hit the beach and the playground, we attended a spider talk, and there were other people present for this, which was nice. First we had a presentation from Ranger Amie inside the visitor center, and we found out:

-Birds eat spiders
-A black widow bite will make you sore all over, but you won't die.
-Mites will attach themselves to spiders and feed on them.
-Spiders eat spiders.
-Wasps eat spiders and will lay their eggs in them.


-Spiders eat mosquitoes, which makes them heroes and heroines.
-All spiders have fangs, 2 body parts, eight legs, eight or six eyes, and an innate ability to terrify the majority of humans.
-All spiders have venom and are poisonous, but it's mostly only poisonous to bugs.
-Male spiders have pedipalps, which are a combination of mating organ and arms, and they use them to do stuff, which is truly multi-tasking. And truly gross if you extend that concept to humans.
-Spiders' legs are attached to the head.
-Spiders are arachnids, and so are scorpions, mites, and daddy long legs (shiver)*. Daddy long legs have a single body part and don't produce silk.

Other interesting facts include that in the US, spiders are lone wolves and live by themselves because (see above) spiders will eat other spiders. Tarantulas are not true spiders because their fangs come down, not from the side. You might get bit by a tarantula, but you won't get hurt. Minnesota's poisonous spiders are the Northern Black Widow and the Brown Recluse. (Which didn't live here before, but thank you, climate change!) The Brown Recluse is gray or brown, has no markings on body, but a marking on the head that looks like a violin (or a fiddle, if the spider has attitude). If you are bitten by a brown recluse, the wound will take at least three months to heal. Put an ice pack on it to keep the venom from spreading, and go to the hospital.

At this point in the talk, I realized that I was spending too much time trying to figure out what kind of spider Shelob is. She makes silk and seems to make sheet webs (flat, convex or concave, only edges are sticky) or irregular cobwebs (no pattern, not sticky, spider sits in the middle), but her silk is definitely sticky, and not all of the 7 types of silk are. (There are four kinds of webs. Funnel webs are like a sheet web but with a hole in the middle, and orb webs are the classic spider webs, the webs that make all other spiders jealous. They have vertical spokes, which are not sticky, and spirals, which are. It takes a spider about 20 minutes to make one, and they rebuild them every day or so.) But spiders that live on webs are almost blind, and Shelob certainly can see. And talk.

I would not be at all surprised if she eats her silk and reuses it, as spiders do. She's an active hunter and jumping spider, but those species do not build webs, only the occasional trip wire to warn them when prey is near. They see well and do a mating dance, which I really can't see Shelob enjoying. For web-building spiders, the male plucks the lady spider's web so she will know he's not food. Active hunters have different silk glands, and they make cottony little, white swabs for their babies.

Speaking of babies, they can't stay in the nest long after they are hatched because their siblings will eat them, so they practice "ballooning," casting one line of silk to get themselves to safety. You've walked through them on your travels in the woods.

Non-mythical spiders live 2-3 years and can have three thousand spiderlings, 2-3 hundred in a single egg sac. Which is something to think about just before you fall asleep.

After the presentation, we went outside to find spiders around and on the visitor center. No Shelob, but as I think she's tarantula-adjacent, she's not a "true spider" anyway.

Don't tell her I said that.

*I have loathed daddy long legs since I was a small child. They used to march through our house at one point every year, and I remember not wanting to walk down the hall to my room because one was hanging out on the wall, in my way.

Fort Snelling State Park: The Beach

We are going to chew the nougaty center out of this urban gem this week; yesterday we dipped our toe into the visitor center and Pike Island. Today, the beach. So far he's mostly playing with his new water pump shooter, which works. He's having fun.

People from states with oceans or even giant freshwater lakes will of course scoff at the following assertion, but they can suck it: this beach rocks. It's wide, sandy, and conveniently located near an international airport. I smell LAYOVER!

No one is going to be surfing on Snelling Lake, but you might be nibbled by fish. Nibbled on, not eaten by, which is something to tell the teenaged girls who were purposefully freaking themselves out with the GIANT FISH in the deeper part of the swimming area. "EEK! A six-inch perch swam by my leg!" Granted, if a 26-inch carp did that, I might EEK as well. And then I would move to the shallow area and let the sunfish stare at my ankles.

It was a transparently gorgeous day with no ulterior motives. We stopped at the Dollar Store on our way there to see about a new beach shovel. Finn has 27 of these, but I could find none this morning. These will last a day or two, but I tell myself the joy they will buy will be worth the dollars. (Parents lie to themselves all the time.) I also bought him a balloon, but that took a trip when I opened his door to fasten his seat belt. I got a face full of shiny, yellow smiley face and off it went, smiling and sailing over the roof of an unfortunate strip mall.

The water is warm and relatively shallow. Finn is 3'6" tall, and he would have to walk out pretty far to get himself into trouble. Still, there are no lifeguards here, so people should be vigilant lest their small child in a colorful innertube scares away all the geese or your 5-year-old buries his new yellow beach strainer in the sand and can't find it (I have no idea who that last example is).

There are two depth levels: sunfish and carp. They are separated by little floaties and the shrieks of adolescence.

Surrounding the beach is a large picnic area with many tables and grills. Trees dot the mown lawn providing some shade most everywhere, ensuring that fistfights don't break out over the prime spot to leave your trash behind when you go home.

There are changing rooms and bathrooms as well as a playground adjacent to the beach.

You can rent a canoe, and there is also a fishing pier, where they do regular "learn how to fish" events.

We went to the beach twice in one day and slipped a doctor's appointment complete with blood test (different blog) in between visits. Finn really enjoyed the sand and shallow, warm water, and the weather was perfection (low 70's, breeze, sunny blue sky). Due, I think, to the breeze, the mosquitoes were not noticeable, but there were some lovely biting flies, so I again recommend bug spray.


More pictures here.

Fort Snelling State Park: Beach

Fort Snelling State Park: Beach, a set on Flickr.

A great beach in the middle of the city.

Fort Snelling State Park: Overview

What you need to know: bug spray.
Bathe in it before you go.
Consider marinating your clothing the night before.

If you like airplanes, then this is the park for you!

Nestled on the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, not far from the Mall of America, Fort Snelling State Park is the easiest metro getaway in the state park system. There is highway and airport noise, but there are also great blue herons and ruby-throated hummingbirds. We found a beach on Pike Island where Finn could throw rocks and branches into the water, and I could write and wish that I had brought a plastic bag to pick up all the trash that dumb people have strewn about. Folks, I like drinking in nature as much as the next gal, but if you packed it in full, you can certainly pack it out empty. IT'S LIGHTER.

This is a running theme in my nature experiences: adults behaving badly (and probably being bad examples to their children. I recently saw two kids throw plastic candy wrappers practically INTO the lion enclosure at the Como Zoo, and I went into a JD-Scrubs-type day dream in which the lion had his revenge).

Anyway... we initially came to the park for Story Time (Mondays at 9:30), and we were the only ones there with a great ranger named Ellen. She read us "Owl Moon" by Jean Yolen and taught us about owls, including playing a few owl calls. I wish that there had been other kids there, but perhaps people don't know about it. So here's your notice: the Minnesota State Park system offers loads of events for kids (grown-ups too, but you can take care of yourselves, right? Except when you are leaving all your crap on a beach).


Take a minute to check out the events calendar at a park near you! (Does that sound commercial-y enough?) Seriously, this is our tax dollars doing excellent, important work, and you can benefit from it. A year-long vehicle pass is $25 for unlimited visits, and most of the activities do not charge beyond that or the day-pass you paid for (usually $5).

Minnesota State Parks fees and the need for a car can be prohibitive, but Fort Snelling is definitely accessible by bicycle and also has a Nice Ride station at the visitor center and bike trails around the park.

We scratched the surface of this park today; there's so much more to see. Though Mr. Monkey Man spent a good deal of time whining during the walkie-bits of the outing, once he has something to do (like throw All The Things into the water), he's golden.

Next up in the park: the swimming beach and then "I Can Fish" on Friday, where they teach you about fishing and provide all the gear.

More pictures from today here.

Fort Snelling State Park

Fort Snelling State Park, a set on Flickr.

It's a few miles from our house, near the airport, and it's a great metro nature getaway.