We’ve been finding these big ol’ garden spiders all around the back yard just lately. They’re huge-o-normous and build the burliest webs which quickly fill up with dried fly husks.
This one wasn’t garden-spidering so much as in-Joel’s-workshop-spidering, so he caught it and put it outside where it belonged. This picture was a team effort, with Joel holding a flashlight and me holding very still, trying to get a reasonably clear low-light picture without a tripod.
Same spider w/ flash! I backed away about 6′, zoomed in, and got a brighter version of the same photo. You can see a bit of the workbench that its web was built on.
I know some people are really freaked out by spiders, but on the whole I don’t mind them at all. I avoid the ones I know to be bitey, but benign (if gnarly) spiders like this one, or those super-hairy jumping spiders simply fascinate me.
OMG!! What the hell kind of spider is that? I dove off my lawnmower when I saw one of these at EYE LEVEL mowing (and I made my dad come and killz it, because I am deathly afraid of spiders). My poor ankle still hurts, but um…glad yours lived?
It’s just called a “garden spider.” They’re totally harmless, so the next time you see one, you don’t have to worry (or kill it). Just let it be and it will eat up a whole lot of destructive insects in your garden.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
LOL, I should tell you about the time I broke my arm in 3 places for a wolf spider dropping on me. While I get they’re harmless, my brain and reactions don’t mesh, and I dove off the mower to avoid the imminent crash into the barn, which occurred moments later.
I’m terrified of them no matter how “harmless” they are.