Just something about spiders I love.

All my life I have been into spiders. I've studied them, kept them as pets, etc. I try not to kill them and usually just carry them out if they get in the house. Due to my daughter and other children in the neighborhood I do kill Back widows & Brown Recluses when found on my property. If not for that I would leave them be.

This little (i use that term loosely) beauty has made a nice little home in some flowers at one of my buildings. I've been feeding her and tending to her best I can for about 2 weeks now. This beauty is an Argiope, also know as a writing spider due to the patterns they make in their webs. Members of this species are found all over the world but not native everywhere so thought I would share.

To give you an idea of size I just gave it a full grown cricket. Fully stretched out its the size of my hand. Sorry for picture quality. Was taken with my phone.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing!

Always shake out your boots in the morning.

August West said:

Always shake out your boots in the morning.

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Amen to that lol.

By October it should be just about as big as one of those lawn spiders.

OneShaveAttaTime said:

By October it should be just about as big as one of those lawn spiders.

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She is pretty much at full growth. I have yet to ever find one any bigger. Then again a steady diet and the right conditions....

Looks like what's called a writing spider. They get their name from the reinforced, multithread portion of their web near its center. The zigzag pattern resembles cursive script. Sometimes when you approach the web they start to flex the web back and forth. I encountered a totally new spider for me the other day while gathering some herbs from the garden. I was clipping the flowers on my basil plants to keep them producing new leaves when I noticed a dead bumble bee dangling from one of the flower clusters. I thought, "That's weird," and took a closer look. There was a green bodied spider clinging to the basil stem. It was slightly smaller than the bumble bee and its coloration closely matched the basil. A few days later it was still there but much larger. No sign of the bee.

oldbluelight said:

Looks like what's called a writing spider. They get their name from the reinforced, multithread portion of their web near its center. The zigzag pattern resembles cursive script. Sometimes when you approach the web they start to flex the web back and forth. I encountered a totally new spider for me the other day while gathering some herbs from the garden. I was clipping the flowers on my basil plants to keep them producing new leaves when I noticed a dead bumble bee dangling from one of the flower clusters. I thought, "That's weird," and took a closer look. There was a green bodied spider clinging to the basil stem. It was slightly smaller than the bumble bee and its coloration closely matched the basil. A few days later it was still there but much larger. No sign of the bee.

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If its what im thinking its a green Crab Spider. We get them a lot around here. Color hue & patterns vary but they pretty much look like this.

The Vez should be along in a minute.

Many years ago my cur dog treed a squirrel in the back yard. My grandmother who was then 82, took the action any one born in 1899 would do. That afternoon she called her sister who was 78 and told her that she had a pot of squirrel and dumpling cooking. Her sister told my grandmother that it was her pet squirrel. My grandmother told her she should have kept her pet squirrel at home! I offer you the same advise as my wife was almost killed by a bite from a brown recluse.

We call them garden spiders where I am from. I had one that used to live on the side of the house. She got really big after I kept feeding her grasshoppers.

We called them Zipper Spiders when I was growing up. They always served as the evening entertainment as we tossed grasshoppers and crickets into the webs. They're definitely cool critters...outside.

FreddieP318ti said:

If its what im thinking its a green Crab Spider. We get them a lot around here. Color hue & patterns vary but they pretty much look like this.

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Yep, that's the beastie. Now if I could just find a spider that specialized in marmorated stink bugs I'd take up breeding them. Spiders never really bothered me but my wife is terrified of them. With the exception of Black Widows I'm really reluctant to kill them. After all poor Arachne got a bad deal from Athena and there's a superstition that it's bad luck to kill a spider. But all spiders observed by my wife get a death sentence and I have to be the executioner. If it's dangling down on a thread I'll sometimes just catch the thread on my hand and commute the sentence by escorting it outside. She's appalled when I do that which is what makes it fun.

The wife got bit by a Brown Recluse on the back of the leg just above the Achilles' tendon. We think while sleeping at night. The bite just festers and blistered followed by skin rot and infection. Not fun at all. It took six months for her to heal, and you can still see we're the bite was after over a year. Nasty little creature.

We have the writing spiders around here, you have to keep your eyes up when walking the woods or you'll have one on your face. I too love to watch spiders and won't kill them unless they are found in the house, all bugs in the house are on death row. We have the occasional tarantula and some really big wolf spiders as well as the fiddle backs and black widows. As long as they're outdoors they're fine with me.

I'm not really a spider guy, but no need to kill 'em unless they are dangerous. They're just trying to make a living like the rest of us. Nice photos.

DoctorShavegood said:

The wife got bit by a Brown Recluse on the back of the leg just above the Achilles' tendon. We think while sleeping at night. The bite just festers and blistered followed by skin rot and infection. Not fun at all. It took six months for her to heal, and you can still see we're the bite was after over a year. Nasty little creature.

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Yeah they are nothing to mess with. Friend of mine got bit on the knee and it took forever to heal. Got bad enough they thought he would lose part of his knee. Been a couple years now and he still has issues with his knee.

Hey Freddie, I had a similar spider species(much smaller) build a web earlier this year on the back of the house and chimney bump out. He was fun to watch and I would feed him. It was in the dead of winter when he tried to make his web, etc. It just didn't seem like a lot of bug action was going on then. So, I turned on the back porch light at night to help. Even in the winter he was getting some nice kills. His web was beautiful and fun to watch him rebuild. Then a 22 degree temperature one morning either did him in or forced him elsewhere.

Sounds like it may have been a Marbled Spider. Common all across the country and will build nests everywhere. When I leave for work in the mornings its still dark so I cut my porch light on just make sure I dont walk through ones web lol. We have them everywhere. The have a broad range of color and patterns and are more abundant at the end of summer, going into fall. Did it look something like one of these?

Where's The Vez!