by Mama Turtle
I'm sensing
a pattern here. Well, statistically speaking, a person is never more than 3 feet away from any given spider because they are so prolific, so no wonder why we keep running into them.
Papa Turtle literally almost ran face first into this one while doing yard work out behind out house:
If you think we took an extreme close-up, we did, but that photo is about actual size. It would easily be the length of the palm of my hand if I held it (no thanks). It's a HUGE golden Argiope, or Garden Spider. It suspended its ginormous (I'm not exaggerating) web between the back wall of the house, the ground, and the back patio. The spider itself was hanging out about five feet off of the ground. I insisted it was not poisonous because its colorful markings seemed to say "I might be poisonous so don't eat me!" and Google says I was right.
At least we haven't seen any more of the poisonous variety.
Do you run into a lot of spiders where you live? Ever seen one of these?
Comments (19)
Say HEY! I ran into that same spider just after reading your post! They are fairly good sized.
Our next door neighbor about 5 years ago had both a male and female of this species of spider.
She came over at about 10pm, asking my wife if she can "borrow" me for a moment to kill a bug. (I could make a post on my wife's response, but I'd digress)...
The female was larger than my hand, and the web took the entire opening to the sliding glass back door on the outside.
I didn't see it at first from the outside, until my face was right on it when my neighbor and wife turned on the kitchen light from inside the house.
the male was about 3/4 the size.
Both scared me to no end.
My wife laughed.
Very pretty!
We don't run into much here. We do have a Daddy Long Legs living in the boys' bathroom though. He doesn't bother us so I haven't moved him.
gross, i dont think ive ran into any huge spiders since living here. daddy long legged spiders are outside my house but i only freak when they think its okay to come up my arm or up my leg.. ewwww.
we have black widows all around our house. And we fumigate because of it....doesn't help. They are there.
hey...i saw one of those the other day...outside my kitchen window. a friend killed it w/ fire...it was fun :P we didn't realize at that time it wasn't poisonous. but i use that window often, so i don't mind him killing it. don't want it in my house...
we have a lot of spiders in the house, they don't bother me...but i kill them all the same cuz they like my pantry!
That's a big spider! Yikes! I almost ran into on hanging from the top of the doorway once. We don't have too many spiders here, but lots of ants. They stopped coming for awhile, but once it became hotter outside, they came in again. This morning they were all over the kitchen....again, not going anywhere in particular, but just meandering.
http://weblog.momaroo.com/mamajoyjoy/672297526/hate-in-my-heart.html
We have spiders but I haven't seen anything near that size and hopefully I never do. We get a lot of other bugs though so it makes up for that I guess. Ticks, ants, bees, spiders, mosquitoes, you name it we probably have it. Living in front of woods gives us a variety.
For some reason, we have lots of daddy long-leg spiders in/around our house. If we're out of town for a weekend or whatever, they take over the bathroom (really only 1-5, but that's plenty for me). But we have nothing likes those huge spiders.
i was laying in bed the other night and i felt a tickle on my arm.. usually i just ignore it.. but the tickle started to go up my arm. i jumped out of bed and turned on the light. a HUGE spider had been crawling on me :(
EW EW EW.
I have seen common Garden Spiders when I lived in the US, and when I've been back home in the Spring or Summer, but they aren't so common here in Japan. I have seen numerous wolf and jumping spiders here, and, to me, they are welcome, because they eat mosquitoes (which proliferate here, and live on until December). My wife and my mother hate them, though....
Oh man! That's the same kind of spider that was haunting our family garden a few years back. Big sucker. Actually about that size...
It's web was in about 3 consecutive bean plants, which is pretty smart, considering how many insects come to try to eat the beans.
My brother and I refused to pick from those plants.
Australia is synonomous with things that bite you. Im so desensitised I pick up huntsmans without a second thought :)
geez I do not want to live where you live...
Oh my gosh, that's creepy!
I usually just see black ones.
I've seen one of those...I tried to get a picture...but I was shaking so bad the picture was horrible!
We don't get to many big ones where we live...which is good cause they scare me half to death. Probably why we have three cats. They are fabulous bug catchers.
Oh I'd be screaming and running, not taking pictures. I think a spider that is more than 1cm is huge. BLECH. Daddy-long legged spiders here are about the norm. Anything bigger than that and I'm gone.
Heh. We run into them a good bit around here. It's awesome for me, because I love spiders, but my fiance' is deathly afraid of them... so it's not so awesome for him.
We were actually out with friends at the park the other day, and I noticed a little crab spider next to me in his little corner-spun web. I thought it was pretty cool, and had no problem with being so close to him... but a friend of ours promptly moved to the other side of the little covered area we were in when I pointed him out.