Spiders! No Eeking!

If there's any reason to love autumn, and there are millions, it's the prevalence of spiders. No, it's not much fun to get a faceful of web on your nice woods walk, but man, it's cool to spot the orb-weaver hanging there, to appreciate its work and the beauty of the little beast before you inadvertently destroy its web. I'm happy to dive off the trail if I can save the spider the trouble of weaving a new web, and save myself the creepy feeling of being draped in silk.

I've been collecting a few spider photos this fall, and thought I'd share them with you. This gorgeous little thing is Verrucosa arenata, found on a pawpaw leaf on the Athens bike trail. You'll see this species hanging in a big orb web across trails.This exquisite little thing, looking like no more than a thorn or a dropping until you peer closely, is Micrathena gracilis, another of the orb weavers, with mesmerizing parallell lines of black and grey on its oddly-shaped abdomen. The graceful little Athena. Clearly, whoever named this spider loved it.

I happened to be watching a funnel web spider (Agelenopsis pennsylvanica) by our front stoop when a big fly--perhaps a greenhead --simply dropped into its web. Swear I didn't do it--pure kismet. Agelenopsis dragged it without ceremony back into its silken lair behind the stoop. Yeah! Beats slapping it off your shoulder.



I reached into the pocket of my pants and felt something kind of hard and wiggly in there. It was Dysdera crocata, a female--the only common species in its family in Ohio. This nocturnal species preys primarily on pillbugs, and is fond of the same dark, moist underneathy spots pillbugs favor. Why it was in my jeans pocket only it knows.
I offered her a pillbug but I think she was too upset to partake, so I let them both go in a damp squashy place in the garden to sort it out.

Sometimes you find a spider what AM a spider. Raking the yard, piling up the seedy hay of autumn, I uncovered this big beauty, one of the biggest wolf spiders I've ever seen. And you have to love its name: Hogna helluo--again, a female. Where are all the male spiders? Seems like all I see is females. Isn't that a cracking name for a big fat spider?
Just to give you an idea how impressive this beastie was, here are my fingers next to her:
That's a big spider, my friends. Glorious huge vampire fangs in a pair on the bidness end, too. I finished my raking, leaving to Liam the task of watching her to safety on the lawn's edge. He escorted her all the way to the tall goldenrod so no one would step on her or swoop down and pick her up. That's my boy. Around here, we like spiders.