In addition to dropping down and pretending to be a piece of bark when I try to photograph her at night, she has the habit of spinning her web in a slightly different spot each night, and she generally destroys most of it by morning. She's camera shy. Silly of her because, as you can see, she's an elegant little beauty with many shades of brown, gold stripes on her leg, and understated striping on the body.
The picture, by the way, is larger than the actual spider. Near as I can tell, she'd about cover the eraser end of a no. 2 pencil with her legs outstretched.
Edit: I was excited to finally have a daylight picture of her and posted it before hearing from the bugguide people. She's almost certainly a Araneus montereyensis. I'm going to keep an eye on her and see what she does.
Right now, she's all curled up under a leaf, legs tucked in, doing her best "I'm just a fleck of detritus" look.
My mom said that both her son and brother would be creeped out by this site!
ReplyDeleteHer older brother was in high school and driving down the street when he looked down and saw a spider on his tie. It freaked him out, so he swerved and hit a parked car! He even saved the spider for evidence!
The last kick is that the owner of the hit car got a ticket because it was on the wrong side of the street!
That sort of response is the reason SpiderWatch is a blog of its own instead of being mixed up among the general-interest stuff over at Bookwyrme's Lair.
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