My apologies to those who are deathly afraid of spiders. You may want to stay away from this Picture Of The Week! When we moved in this summer, we noticed there were a lot of spiders around the house. We think it is partly due to the woodland location, and partly due to the fact that the house had been empty for six months, and nobody was around to clean up the spider eggs before they hatched.

Anyway, one particular spider caught our attention. It built a web in our kitchen window, right in the perfect place to catch bugs as they were attracted to the kitchen lights when it got dark. Consequently, this spider ate quite well each night, and became super huge! We named it George, even thought it was clearly a female spider.

George is an Orb Weaver, and throughout the summer we watcher her eat at night, and fix her web when it got damaged. Now that it is colder out, George is nowhere to be found, and has probably passed on, but she left behind a large egg sac, ready to spawn the next generation of Georges next year. As much as I enjoyed having George around, I think I might do some sweeping around the outside of the house, and maybe we will have fewer spiders next year.

Angela took these photos in happier times, when George was still with us.

Technical details: These photos were taken by Angela with her Canon SD450 on auto, with flash and without.

Comments

Aw, poor George! She lived a full life.

AAAHHH! That's what I get for always looking at the picture before I read your
description...