Arachnis deathicus

Roxanne Ritchi: The spider's new.

Megamind: Spider?

Megamind: Uh... Ah yes, the spyiiiiiider. Even the smallest bite from... "arachnis deathicus"... will instantly paralyze...

I'm not a big fan of spiders. I can tolerate them long enough to kill them. That's about it. (Michele likes to rescue them and return them to the wild.)

Anyways, late one night, I found myself taking out the trash. As I was walking down the path that connects our house to the street, I caught the faint shimmering of a spiderweb. Unfortunately, it was hanging under a tree branch smack in the middle of the sidewalk at head height. I moved in for a closer look and saw an enormous spider, the size of a ping pong ball suspended in the middle. Ughhh... Lucky for it, I didn't have anything that I felt comfortable killing it with, so I dodged around it, went to the dumpster, and hightailed out of there.

The next morning, no spider. But come 10 pm, there were THREE enormous spiders, spread underneath the branch, waiting for the unwary pedestrian. This continued for several weeks, and we made a point of keeping a wide berth. Apparently, these are some type of tree-dwelling spider that cast webs every night. (Any entomologists reading this?)

A few weeks later, I finally mustered the courage to take a photo. Even with Michele's super duper zoom lens, I had to get uncomfortably close...

The next morning, I had to go up to work early to quench some reaction that would probably take out half the floor if it warmed up to room temperature. I rushed out the door and was halfway to the street when all of a sudden I had the horrible feeling of spider silk all over my face and I felt something heavy and exoskeletal bounce off the back of my head. I freaked out, ran back home and asked Michele (while she was still asleep. I woke up to a screaming husband saying something about evil spiders. No joke. Weirdest way to get woken up.)  to conduct a thorough examination and reassure me that the spider wasn't about to sink it's proboscis into my neck.

Since then, we haven't seen any more spiders. In a way, I guess they aren't evil. We sure get a lot fewer mosquitos than one would expect, but still, I wish they would do their business somewhere I couldn't see them.