Thursday, August 18, 2005

Arachnophobes Beware:

As I've previously mentioned it seems that this is another Year of the Spider. I had thought that maybe it was going to be something else, but the spiders aren't done with me yet. I've gotten much confirmation on figuring this out in the form of seeing many more spiders and some unusual ones. What the Spider does is weave webs. And interestingly enough, this World Wide Web is quite like the Dreamcatcher that the Native Americans designed. Here are some pictures I took this week of some of my spider friends.


Black and Yellow Argiope, Argiope auranita, with prey, poor little thing has lost a leg somehow. There are a couple of these spiders near my tomato plants. Around here they are commonly called "writin' spiders" because of the zigzag patterns in their webs. When we were kids we always heard that if you saw your name or initials in a web that you were going to die soon. But I've also read that in some areas the folklore is that the name or initials would be of your future spouse. Like they say, "Life's a bitch, then you marry one and die." Or something like that.


Triangulate Orb Weaver, Verrucosa arenata, actually there are two of these near my house, this one with a yellowish back and another with a whitish back


Green lynx spider, Peucetia viridans, I like the violetish color on its legs, and this was the first of this species I'd ever seen. It was on a rose bush, and yesterday it caught a Japanese beetle and was ingesting it. I tried to get a picture, but none of the shots came out good enough.


Another Green lynx spider, with prey, this is not the same one as above. This one was on a hydrangea bush.

7 comments:

Rae Ann said...

hey, sploggers! Stop it! I don't have acne and I don't care about cholestrol.

Rae Ann said...

juan pablo, thanks!

Rae Ann said...

anonymous sploggers, I'm not visiting your sites so you get paid for the ads on them and all that.

Chris said...

Jesus Christ! Where the hell do you live that you have spiders like that? Man! Didn't Sean Astin fight one of those in Lord of the Rings?

Great pics, though. :)

Chris said...

Oh, and you can permanently delete the splogger comments. There's a checkbox for it when you go to delete the comment.

Rae Ann said...

chris, thanks! The East TN countryside is full of little critters and crawlies. They look much bigger in these close-up pics. Yeah, why do they always have to fight giant spiders in movies? Harry Potter had one too. I've got a healthy respect and fear of them. They are fascinating though because they are so different from us. Like little aliens or something.

mydadsnameisharold said...

Gorgeous pics!! Love spiders. Take a look at my spider pic collection!