Spider Woman

    During the daylight hours, if you walk out onto my back porch you will see no sign of a spider or a spider web.
    Walk out onto the porch at night and you will see a different scene.   
    Every night at sundown this Barn Spider comes out of hiding to build a web on my back porch. She spends over an hour to weave her complex net and it spans an opening that is six feet high. At the end of her project she moves directly to the center and sits motionless, quietly waiting for her dinner.
    She does not mind the camera flash at all. But let something touch her web and she is on high alert. A touch to her web could mean supper has arrived.
    In the morning when light first touches the sky she suddenly becomes mobile again. She cuts her web down with two or three well placed snips and goes straight back to her hiding place under the eaves. She probably eats some of her web because it contains a lot of protein and it benefits her to reuse that.
    The spider in the children's book "Charlotte's Web" was a Barn Spider. Like Charlotte, this spider will disappear when cold weather arrives. I hope next year one of her daughters will take her place to eat the mosquitoes that are so fond of my porch.
    Click on this link if you would like to see a video of a spider spinning her web.