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Nature Display: A Picture A Day

Blog Post #10

Spotted Orb-weaver Spider - House window: Leander, TX

The Scoop:

Wooohooo!!  I got all freaked out for nothing!  Meet our new bug catcher, the spotted orb-weaver spider.  Not dangerously venomous but looks an awful like a Hobo Spider which is very venomous, turns out those spiders are not found in TX.  This is still a rather intimidating looking spider, he she caught my eye from off the side of our walk and he she had very little patience for my flash camera.  This particular picture was taken from inside our house, looking out through the window he she spun his web on outside.  We tend to have a love/hate relationship with spiders.  Creepy crawly?  Yes.  Predator of other creepy crawlies? YES!  I guess the latter wins it because we definitely want him her to stick around for that reason.  If you look close at the picture you can see the web silk coming from his her abdomen as he she was still in the process of spinning.  Very interesting fella!

Look here to see a few more pictures I took of him on the Spider Identification Forum; it's a great resource and it's how I got a definitive answer on which spider I found:

http://www.spideridentification.org/forums/showthread.php?p=8059&posted=1#post8059

**Updated 9/13/10: Turns out our spidey friend is actually a girl spider!  My apologies!!