We have a rather large garden spider that has been living outside our back door this summer. For reference, those clapboards are about 3" wide. She is a really beautiful critter. Owen was rather frightened of her for a while and wouldn't turn on the water faucet under her web. Caedmon has been fascinated with the "piduh" since we first noticed her. We now all watch her daily to see how she is doing and how big she has gotten.
3 comments:
Oh Melinda! What an awesome spider! I'm so excited about the egg sack. Will it do ok over the winter? Will the mama live all winter? I don't know much about spiders.
I've worked pretty hard to overcome a knee-jerk revulsion to them, but I think they're so useful (for eating insects which drive me nuts) that I'm always pleased to see them. We had one that lived in our laundry detergent bucket for several months this summer, every time I did laundry I saw him in there crawling around on top of the powdered soap. I always wondered what he found to eat in there. Unfortunately he died a few weeks ago (so maybe there wasn't much to eat after all). He was much smaller than yours though, maybe about an inch from side to side.
did you name her charlotte?
I do, indeed, think of her as Charlotte, although I generally call her "pretty lady."
From what I have read, she will die when the weather turns cool around the first frost, and the babies will hatch in the spring. There should be thousands of them, and they will look like dust when first hatched. Hmm, I doubt there was much to eat in there with the laundry powder - not much a a biological niche.
Post a Comment