The spider adventures continue...is it Halloween already?!?

Well, because some of us are morbidly curious about the behavior of this spider, I'll continue blogging our neighbor's activities. I was encouraged by my brother Bart's comment on my last post, which, if you missed it, said "Maybe I'm sick, but I think it's fascinating!" Well, Bart, maybe you are sick but if so, I am too. Must run in the family. Consider yourself warned though, if you got the creeps from my last post, you probably don't want to click on this pictures in this post.

The morning after I discovered the grasshopper caught in the web, I went outside and this is what I saw:



Yep, the spider was still hard at work on that grasshopper. If you click on the picture, you'll notice that the grasshopper is quite diminished. And, unless I'm imagining it, the spider looks bigger. I'm also a little disturbed by the state of the grasshopper's head (or lack thereof). Ick.

Here's another view. I took these pictures (the one above and this one) within seconds of each other, but I'm mystified by this one. Where's the grasshopper? You can see little flashes of green, but it looks like mostly spider. Maybe it was a trick of the camera lens.


A few hours later I checked outside again, and both the spider and the grasshopper were gone. All that remained was a somewhat tattered, very abandoned-looking web. I wondered if the spider had moved on to greener pastures, and as I checked on and off throughout the day and he didn't come back, I thought our spider adventures were over. In the evening, I checked again, and lo and behold...


At this point the web was reduced to maybe 1/6 of it's original size. It didn't look like it was anchored to anything...it was just this little wispy thing hanging from the eaves of the house. But the spider was hanging out there anyway. The next morning (Wednesday) the spider and the remainder of its web had disappeared, and I figured for sure the spider had packed his bags and moved away. Then this morning, I looked out again (as you can tell, I kind of missed the guy) and saw that this spider was just as clever as our previous residents!


Here's his new web, spanning our two houses again. I have to admit I think this is a pretty smart web-building strategy...I had to take two or three photos at different times this morning to get one where you could actually see the web. It is often virtually invisible, and of course, that's all the better to catch unsuspecting insects. You'll notice the spider is absent from the web in this picture...I think that the way he has anchored his web to the fence below and even as far as the sidewalk (how do they do that?) makes him more aware of our comings and goings, because when I try to walk closer to get a good picture, he inevitably scurries away (thankfully he tends to scurry to the eaves of the neighbor's house and not ours). I did catch one shot of him mid-scurry though...


See how invisible that web is? Pure genius. I'm very curious to see what he's going to catch in his web this time. I don't know if he can outdo the giant grasshopper, but I'm not underestimating his abilities.

Here's how Weston feels about our spider (notice his patch):


How appropriate, huh? Well, Happy Halloween (a little early this year)...nothing like spiders to get you in the holiday spirit!