It’s going to be a good day. I was in the kitchen early in the morning, fixing a cup of tea, when a very tiny friend came to visit. She was exploring the cupboards when I made her sit down for a quick photo shoot.
Even in the depths of winter spiders can always find refuge in my home.



Spiders are safe in our home. I’m not allowed to clear the cobwebs in the corners until they get really messy. We even have spiders living in the side mirrors of our car. They have quite a web around both mirrors and the car doors, and they are tough. Even driving freeway speeds doesn’t damage with the web.
How big is she?
Small. Only 4 or 5 mm long.
I use a face shot of a similar jumping spider as my “camera off” image on Zoom. I found it on our kitchen window, and it was one of the first pictures I took with my then-new macro lens. The picture gets a lot of comments, and now I know which of my colleagues are arachnophobes.
Why she so stripey?
Jumping spiders have that fluffy, big eyed thing going on that makes kittens and puppies so cute, and at that size my irritating ‘AAAARGH spider!’ reaction doesn’t happen.