Or, more accurately, "was"...(Click on the image for a -- heh, heh, I was going to say "better" view. How about, "for a closer look".)
And please, nobody tell me it's the state spider and protected by law. I just don't think I have it in me tonight to handle that.
Dy
12 comments:
EEEEewwww. That is an "Amazingly Large and Scary Spider" if I've ever seen one. I don't know if I could handle life in the south.
What did your kids think? I'll have to show my kids your picture.
I think you did your state a great and heroic service in killing that spider.
Damn you woman. I've gotten 5 e-mails about spiders in my area and spider bites on my friends and friends kids/babies. Including recluses and brown widows (I didn't know they came in other colors). YIKES. I did.not.want.to.look at that hairy nasty spider! But I did, close up, becasue I love you. I'm going to find a site to I.D. it now for you. You owe me one lady. Did I tell you the other morning "C" woke me up with a spider right next to my face, "LOOK MOM - I caught a spider"!!! *sigh*
Now I know I was just complaining a GIANT ROACH IN MY LIVING ROOM, AKA Water Bug or River Roach or whatever these dang southerners prefer to call them, but...
I'm pretty sure your spider is harmless. The striped legs made me think of an orb weaver, but those usually show up later in the summer, around August. And it's not in a web. Then I thought wolf spider, but all of my wolf spiders are brown. We get a lot of those, and they don't build webs.
I've never seen a brown recluse in person, but I have seen brown widows, which are quite light, with brown and white striped legs, and unless you see them upside down, you'd never know they were evil, poisonous kid killers. (They aren't anywhere near as poisonous as black widows, though.)
There. I think that information is useless enough!
You can e-mail the pic to "What's That Bug" and they will tell you, here's the link:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/index.html
Unless I know what it is I kill spiders like that immediately. It's not worth it to mess around with spiders.
Hope that helps!
mere
i think it's an garden spider - and orb weaver
we had some like that - but ours were more zebra like
shannon
Oh, good grief, Dy. Don't. Do. That. To. Me. Please. :P
There are only two kinds of spiders: dead, and too fast. Beyond that, I don't give a rat's ass about spider taxonomy. *shudder* One crawled up my leg last night, and the only thing that prevented me from screaming like an axe murderer was hiding in the bushes was that I didn't know what it was until I got it off of me. It realized it's fate as a Dead Spider shortly thereafter. Go me.
Now That is a truly hideously frightening spider. I will probably have nightmares about him, thank you very much! And You actually killed him? Wow! I do not deal with large spiders. Killing them (and the camel crickets), is one of Ed's few remaining and non-negotiable responsibilities.
Dy, that is a scary, scary spider. This is what kind it is!
Jess, you are braver than I. THere is no way I am enlarging that picture!
KathyJo, I agree about there only being two kinds of spiders- dead and too fast.
LB
Evil. Concentrated Evil. Does it really need any other name than that? Gigantically huge, fast as the wind itself and just...just Evil.
Last week, Jackson knocked unconscious the EXACT same type of spider (he said it was dead but I SAW it move) and then showed it to me--or tried to, anyway, as I escaped to the relative safety of Melissa's deck-- it was still moving---I SWEAR!!Jack was adamant that I should get close to it so that I could see how amazingly HUGE the fangs were!!
We just always called them water spiders because you generally find them around creeks and damp places. Anyway, they are not poisonous, but they CAN make you bleed if they bite you. They DO have some nasty fangs.
It's NOT a garden spider--they have a distictly striped abdomen and thinner legs and body. And the critters we always called Wolf spiders were considerably furry and had no stripes of any kind.
I think I'm not being much actual help here,just throwing in my 2 cents. I just got so creeped out when I saw the picture, I had to say SOMETHING, heh-heh (nervous laughter).
That's a nice picture of it, BTW. Disturbingly clear. Really. *SHUDDER*
That is one h*lluva spider!
*shudder*
And you are one brave woman. Give me my thirty-below-zero winters over big, hairy spiders anyday!! ;)
Ugh. I swear I've got one crawling up my back this very moment.
Okay, first of all thank you for the impromptu biology lesson of the morning (and this, not even a school day-sheesh). After searching the internet for the last 1/2 hour (I know-dedication), I came across this site:
http://www.spiderzrule.com/wolf.htm
It appears that there are over 2,000 different kinds of wolf spiders, and after looking at the exptensive collection of photos on this site, it appears that what you saw may have been a wolf spider.
Just my two cents.
~dawn
Both boys say it's a wood spider. Fast as lightning, but harmless. They don't make webs, and are an ambush predator. They are typically found underneath something, on a tree, a wood pile, or a wall, trying to blend in!
Post a Comment