After I was done protesting yesterday (lie: we’re never done protesting), it was late, it had been a long day, and I was too tired to cook, so I just picked up some wraps at Subway. The Sandwich Artist, who is also a student at UMM, said, “Hey, aren’t you really into spiders?” Yes, of course, my reputation is spreading, I guess. “There’s a big spider on the window over there, it’s been here for several days.”
Of course I looked.
I came back this morning when the light was good, with my camera. There she was, with a big orb web against the glass…Argiope aurantia.
It was impressive, especially since it’s been so chilly lately. I noticed the stabilimentum on the web are rather disorganized and scraggly — a kind of disordered denser mess around the center of the orb here. But she was huge and pretty, and most conveniently right at eye height. This was shot with just my 17-85mm zoom lens, nothing fancy, and I’m tempted to go back later with my good macro setup and get some closeups.
What I find cool about this is not the (good IMO) picture you took, but that you’re at a school that is small enough that students you don’t necessarily know still know something about you and what you do. I went to a midsize school. Sometimes I wish I’d gone to, say, UW or something similar. But other times, I wonder what it would’ve been like to do the small liberal arts college thing.
She’s gorgeous. So nice that the Sandwich Artist allows her to protect the premises from nasty flies. So many arachnophobes in this world, as I’m sure you know.
What a beauty.
What’s going on with that ninth leg? A bit of prey? An unlucky mate?
I brought one of these home for my kids earlier this summer. It is in a cage in our livingroom with 2 egg sacks. They catch grasshoppers for her. They named her Charlotte, i call her shelob.
Nice. We get some wonderful spiders here – Eastern Australia. One seen just the once and the like never again – and I still lament my failure to photograph it – was an ant mimic that walked on six legs and held the front pair up like antennae. Very convincing. But it walked like a spider, which was what made me look closer.
When I lived in Minnesota I once watched a failed mating attempt with these.
robertbaden@7
Rule 34! Where do I find video of failed arachnid mating attempts? (Though I suspect the cannibalistic ones have a bigger following.)