Pure love.

This may be the most intense spider season I've ever seen in the PNW. Concentrate on the issue at hand.

These spiders were busy making more spiders outside my window this morning. How am I supposed to explain to my child what he saw? Not that spiders even think about that kind of thing.

Yesterday I saw a spider approach a bug that had been caught in its web. "Oh, joy!" I thought, "I get to witness a spider capturing his/her food, wrapping it up with his/her Saran-like strings, and go hide to consume it!" But no. S/he proceeds to SWALLOW IT WHOLE. One little bug wing dangles from its jaw as the spider proceeds to go back up to his/her corner, plop down on the couch, and get fat off his/her meal while watching Gossip Girl.

blah. meh. etc.

is that a fish that it caught?

i normally don't kill spiders . i do that hippie thing and set them free outside the door next to some bushes..but yesterday a spider charged me while i was trying to read my morning slog.. and fast.. since when did spiders get so fast ?..musta happened that same decade flesh eating zombies got fast.

Charging spiders? Wallet stealing spiders? Spiders suck, and they are just getting worse. Looks like I picked a completely justifiable phobia.

I learned that same lesson (about the wallet, not the dickishness of spiders). Fortunately, I found my wallet, but I now always toss my wallet into my car before I start pumping gas.

Not all dock spiders are like that you know. Many are honest and hard-working, even with no positive male role model and 9,000 siblings.

The wallet on top of the car is because there are no womens clothes with pockets, right? Because wallet in the pocket seems like a simple way to avoid this.

Losing the gas cap on top of the car I understand...but not the wallet.

cute story, a shame though

I loled.

Here's a good Spider of the Day for tomorrow: Cyclocosmia ricketti are a species of trapdoor spider that have an abdomen ending in a hardened disc that looks like an old weathered copper coin. They live in Asia, though related spiders from the Cyclocosmia genus live in the U.S.

some pics here: http://www.geekfill.com/2010/07/28/let-m…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHGGG!

Ah, but the dock spider is like the Santa Claus of the arthropods compared to the things that parasitize it.

And me with my penchant for picking up pennies unless they're right under a urinal or something. (A co-worker told me it's bad luck to walk away from a found penny--and if it's tails-up, be sure to flip it over before retrieving.)

Mental illness is a terrible thing.

@16 - and even your link is nothing compared to the horror of this:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_gia…

I am pretty sure the french intern ate your wallet, and then complained it was too salty, and not authentically french enough.

@20 --
I'd say it's still a toss up. There's something about being paralyzed and having an egg sack deposited in my abdomen that seems primordially terrifying. But having a flock of sparrow-sized hornets descend on me sounds pretty terrifying, too. I think the ultimate moral of the story is that we are blessed living in Seattle, where there is very little to sting/paralyze/parasitize/poison us.

@20: Yeah, these honeybees have evolved a unique defense against those hornets. When they detect a hornet scout, they prepare a trap for it just inside the hive entrance. When the hornet enters the hive, it is immediately set upon by a mass of bees that cover it entirely and shiver, essentially cooking it to death.

@7 - Rev, it's kind of pointless to set house spiders outside. You might as well just kill them. House spiders usually don't live very long outside.

And we have a thriving population of the fastest spiders in the world here, the Tegenaria Domesitica (Giant European House Spider). They're unnervingly fast and kind of horrifyingly large (I call them baby tarantulas), but pretty nonaggressive. My cats kill them the instant they see them; I've never found one alive more than a couple feet from the door.

If you have a population of Tegenaria Domestica in your crawlspace, don't bug bomb it! They compete with the smaller, and much more dangerous, Tegenaria Agrestis (hobo spider), and killing off a colony of the Giants just invites the hobos to move in.

I agree with Weekilter. You got issues.

Hang in there, everybody. September is Spider month in the Pacific Northwest. As soon as we get some good icy October weather, spiders will quit showing up everywhere and will go back to lurking in their usual dark corners.

@6. That IS totally a fish.