Mondays are always productive days around the homestead. Boring but productive. It's hard to call cleaning house and doing the laundry exciting but it does feel good when they're out of the way for the week.
This Monday was like the rest...things got done. There are even some Halloween decorations up. Halloween, you say? Those who know me well will tell you I'm not a fan of the holiday so it would be hard to imagine pumpkins filling my porch or bats and black cats inhabiting my tabletops. If I dug deep enough I might find an old pumpkin or ghost left over from the days when I did ceramics but they haven't seen the light of day in years.
Nope, my decorations this year are much more natural:
Somehow it seemed fitting for the season to find this very large and very colorful banana spider and her elaborate web just outside one of the doors to the screened enclosure when I headed for it to shake rugs this afternoon. I say she just because of the size...the females are larger than the males. I know she wasn't there Friday because I went in and out of that door multiple times.
But she's there now, having spun her web an at angle between the screen door and the Mexican petunias growing in the flower bed at the side. And she's a beauty, too. The gray part looks as if it would be fuzzy if you could touch it...but, of course, I wasn't going to try. The legs are shiny and slick and really long. From the tips at the top of the picture to the ones at the bottom, they probably measured more than 3". We've had banana spiders build webs against the screened enclosure before but never one quite this large. Makes me wonder when she's been hiding in order to get this big.
Her new home is not exactly in the most convenient place as I go in and out of that door rather regularly but I'll alter my routine for a while. If she wants to eat bugs in my yard, she's welcome to stay. With her bright colors and humongous legs she makes the perfect Halloween decoration...but it's probably a good thing she's not at the front door.
Not a big fan of spiders myself, but if she sticks to her own area and doesn't encroach upon my physical being...we could coexist! LOL!
Posted by: Sue H. | October 10, 2012 at 06:48 AM