TirithRR wrote:
I don't mind spiders that much... but if that thing were in my back yard it would be dead the moment I saw it. Probably with some sort of spray can + flame.
I had a golden orb weaver in my front yard in Victoria, Australia, but a slightly different species.. um...genus..um...it wasn't exactly the same. It wasn't as large as that one at any rate, although is was pretty @#%^ing large. It's leg tips spread about as wide as my hand by the time it finished growing, but very slender legs, so it wasn't like the spider overall was as big as my (small female) hand. It had almost a perfectly spherical body, unlike the oblong body of that one, and it was a very pretty green, with an attractive pattern of speckles on it. Alltogether a more attractive looking spider than the Queensland Golden Weaver
Golden Orb Weavers are known for their extremely large and beautiful long-lived webs, and people who aren't arachnophobic are often proud to have Orb Weaver webs in their garden or in the spaces on their porch. It's like having a garden feature, sculpture or fountain built for you for free. The one in my yard built a perfectly formed circular web about 1 meter (3 1/2 feet) in diameter. (Not counting the support structures of the disk, which put the web at about 3 meters (10.5 foot) wide.
It gathered pollen, and arranged it in a thick straight line in the middle of the web, and during the day the spider would perch at the end of the line of pollen, and arrange it's legs in three groups together so that the pollen and spider together looked extremely like a small branch, or twig, hanging there in mid-air.
This web was built over a flower bed, close to the front fence, and not in the way of where anyone had to walk. I wouldn't have dreamed of taking it down or interfering with the Orb Weaver, which was a very stationary creature that stuck close to it's very obvious and avoidable web.
Edited, Oct 23rd 2008 2:29am by Aripyanfar