Cool spider at my house

Basilica orb weaver, with eggsack.

Isn’t she pretty?

I meant to post this on Friday, but I was having technical difficulties. Sadly, I haven’t seen her since Sunday, so she’s probably gone to that big web in the sky. But if those eggs hatch, I’ll have more pretty colorful spiders around to look at.

Wow–that spider looks remarkably like a blue robot disassembling itself.

:confused: Blue?

The link isn’t working, so we’re seeing a Google error (with a blue robot).

Yeah…what they said.

And today I learned that linking to my own Google Photos account only works for me.

Er, try here.

Try imgur. Or see if Google Photos has an option to share pictures to a URL.

But the second link works for you, right?

I didn’t even get a blue robot! What a rip!

The other day, out in my garage, on the floor in the corner was a tiny little hummingbird, dead with a filthy giant black widow sucking its head! :eek:

No, your spider is not cool!

That’s a cool spider. Also, for a second, because of that thick bit of silk going up from that wrapping on the right, I thought she’d caught a mouse!

There are only two types of spiders: Squished ones and those who haven’t been dealt with yet. (Why yes, I am Arachnophobic, why do you ask?)

No, it was my cat who caught a mouse last night. And ate it right in front of me, on the white basement carpet.

I see a smaller white spider there too (upper left), can’t tell if it is dead…

^Desiccated remains of a smaller spider. Maybe the luckless male?

I have a bunch of these Jewel spiders around the house. The largest has a body roughly the size of the tip of my thumb from the nail line up. I feed her grasshoppers occasionally.

Cool Spider, MIS

Oh, that’s not a mouse? Oh!

I don’t mind spiders in general but some weeks ago I reached for my quilting to work on it and a stripy chunk spider was on it! Ahh! I was able to capture him in a tin and escort him outside. He was concentric black and brown stripes kind of like

http://www.spiders.us/files/dolomedes-tenebrosus-36.jpg

He seemed huge but I found a dead one later and it was maybe a fity cent piece had the legs been stretched out.

No cool spiders (I sometimes get an orb weaver around) but this is the time of year when the flowering onions alongside the house are in bloom and attract both flies and preying mantises. I saw one the other day every bit as long as 4" and with legs that touched all ends of the mason jar I temporarily put her in to show my son. Her size and dark brown body mark her as a Chinese mantis but my personal favorites are the bright green ones whose long bodies become invisible in the grass-like onion foliage.

I WiSH we had praying Mantii . They are freaking cool! Also, Chameleons.