
Yowsers! Take a look at this huntress! She’s been hiding in a leaf she wove into a web, by our back door, all this week. Let me tell you, Oh Best Beloved, this gal can run like the wind, too…
Spiders used to make me shudder, but I’ve come to appreciate their incredible webs and the place they have in keeping down the population of flies and such. However, I still don’t like unexpected close encounters of the eight-legged kind, especially late at night when I’ve removed my glasses. With my poor eyesight, if I can see a spider pattering across the wall whilst my glasses are off, it means my little arachnid friend is roughly the size of, oh, an M1A1 Abrahms battle tank. Or larger.

I grabbed an old yardstick we keep in the garage, just to give you an idea of this orb spider’s size (sorry about the faded-out ink on the yardstick, but you get the idea). She refused to stretch out for me, so in this photo she’s sort of scrunched up and about 2/3rds of her real length. As you can see, she’s a respectable one inch long when crouched.

Here she is fully stretched out in her web, waiting for dinner to arrive. I’m guessing (as she refused to let me near again with the yardstick to get a second measurement) that she’s between one and 3/8ths inches to one and a half inches long — about the diameter of a silver dollar. These shots are all taken of her from her tummy side (that’s her ventral side for all you budding scientists out there), so you can see not only her legs but her rather sizable mandibles.
What’s that? Was I worried that she might scurry onto me?
No, no, of course not… well, maybe a little. Or maybe a lot. Or maybe…
Actually, truth be told, I would have shrieked louder than a blaring tornado siren if she’d bounded out of that web and landed on me…
Butterflies are much less stressful to photograph!