If You Want To Work In The Cranberry Bogs, You Better Be Fine With Wolf Spiders Crawling All Over You
If you are not from Massachusetts or another cranberry-producing region, the word 'bog' can sound a little eerie. In this story, though, it has nothing to do with anything creepy in a basement, it is all about cranberry farming and the flooded fields that make harvest possible.
That setup comes with one very unexpected detail, wolf spiders. They help keep pests under control in the bogs, which is useful for farmers and unsettling for just about everyone else. It is the kind of job detail plenty of people would never think to ask about until they are already standing in the mud.
And once the spiders start moving, the whole cranberry harvest gets a lot harder to ignore.
For some people, 'The Bog' spontaneously invokes images of bog bodies. Not very pleasant… It’s completely different in Massachusetts, though… Thank God.
Cranberries are grown in bogs. When it’s harvest time, the bogs are flooded, and the berries rise to the surface, where they are gathered using these hoops.
Farmers use wolf spiders to keep the pest population under control. It's far better than using pesticides.
Meanwhile, don’t forget the wild pigs with fluorescent blue flesh, the kind of warning that sounds fake until scientists confirm it.
This is all very nice until it’s time to flood the bog and collect the berries. There’s a good reason cranberry farmers ask potential employees if they’re okay with spiders...
It doesn’t sound like a pleasant experience, does it? Most of us don’t really mind spiders - when they are far away. That would probably change the minute they get on your face or into your hair. Would you be comfortable with this?
Want more “extreme survival” science? See how sea spiders fueled by methane turned the deep ocean into their buffet.
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