Charlotte

dreadnut

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This is the name I gave to the big garden spider on my front porch, and what a strange web she wove, I've never seen a web quite like this.

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D30Man

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Beautiful and dangerous looking all at the same time.. Gotta love nature..
 

gjmalcyon

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Late summer and early fall we'll get a couple in the back yard that spin enormous webs between the clothesline and lowest branches of our Sycamore tree. I have been known to leave the light on all night over the back steps to help them acquire prey.

Under the terms of our marriage agreement, I am obligated to advise and warn She Who Must Be Obeyed of their presence since that time she walked through a big web ...
 
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DThomasC

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There is a spider that recently decided it wants to build a web right across my front door. First time, I took it down. It's my front door; build your web somewhere else. It built another web and I took that one down. Third time, the web isn't all the way across the door opening, but mostly up in one corner. So I guess we've reached a compromise.
 

Default

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Starting to be the season for orb spinners here. Nothing like walking face-first through one of those.
 

twocorgis

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I might be in the minority here, but I've always loved spiders. My dad taught me at a very young age to never kill them, and to the best of my knowledge, I never have.
 

dreadnut

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In Michigan we don't have any spiders that are fatal to humans, for the most part they catch and eat insects which is OK by me.
 

Guildedagain

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Love orb spiders, so clever where they spin their web, so cool to see one wrap a yellow jacket up and make a slurpie out of it for later ;)

I always got a kick out feeding spiders bugs when I was a kid, the tunnel spiders around basements
 

dreadnut

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I witnessed something really cool a couple years ago in my yard; a baldface hornet attacked a big 4-winged dragonfly mid-air and took it down to the ground. After tussling around and stinging the dragonfly to death, the hornet wrapped it up in its legs and flew away. Wow.
 

gjmalcyon

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We had "cicada killer" wasps nesting in the summer in the sand and gravel school yard across the street from our first house in the next town over: Wasps big enough to find, sting and paralyze a cicada, and then carry it to a nest burrow as a live meal for its developing larvae. Totally frightening insects and totally oblivious to humans.
 

dreadnut

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Yeah, those cicada killers are some huge nasty looking critters, like hornets on steroids, thank goodness they don't sting humans. I also saw a bunch of them nesting in a school playground over the summer.
 

FNG

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I'll tell you what is nasty...fire ants.
 

dreadnut

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My old Navy buddy who lives in Lakeland FL used to call 'em "piss ants" when we were stationed in Jacksonville. "Hotter than a piss ant!" I had one particularly unpleasant encounter while walking across a field there, my foot went down in a hole and when I pulled it out there were a bunch of those little ba$tards attached to my leg, when you brush them off they leave their heads behind, stuck to your flesh with their mandibles.
 

dreadnut

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Sad to report Charlotte is gone...not sure why, either she moved or someone swept her away. Fortunately, she has two siblings higher up on the porch! Both with the same weird web design.
 
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