Spiders won’t leave me alone. They both scare me and fascinate me. It’s like we’re meant to be… ok getting carried away. But I do see my share of spiders.
I was biking in southern Maine recently when I came across the biggest spider web I’ve ever seen. Beside of the trail, the web stretched down from a tree limb to a fence far below. I had to stop and take a good look. And the bulbous spider I found hard at work near the center was pretty nasty looking. The orange and black stripes on its legs made it seem tropical, and the round body looked like a turtle shell. OK, it wasn’t that big. In fact, it wasn’t even as big as the black and yellow garden spider I recently took a photo of. But it wasn’t small!
I didn’t have my zoom lens, so the photos aren’t up close and personal like some of my spider pics (they are really starting to pile up), but I’ll show you what I did manage to capture.
I just hope you appreciate that I stood on my tip toes to get these photos because this creepy thing was crawling and spinning its web above my head… above my arm reach really. It was a giant web. I’m so glad it was on the side of the trail and not smack dab in the middle. If I had run into this web on my bike, it would have engulfed half my body. (Shiver.)
A couple of other bicyclists stopped, too, while I was there and remarked on the crazy bigness of the spider and web.
So.. what is this spider? Any ideas? Leave guesses in the comment section below.