She and I have come to an understanding...

[SunnyD]

why all the spider hate?

I'd rather have one of those guys hanging out than a bunch of flying insects. Plus they are cool looking.

I wish they would find something better than a web though. Maybe make a house out of something cool like spaghetti?

I wish I grabbed a pic of her web last evening. It's about 2 to 2.5 feet in diameter these days.

 

[Saint Nick]

You're probably right.

It's almost certainly not a male, they're much smaller:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_silk_orb-weaver#Appearance_and_distribution

I don't mind them when it's one or two. What really sucks is being forced to cross a field of dead sunflower stalks with thousands of them getting fat on grasshoppers. I'm not sure how many i brushed off me, but at least one made it down my shirt.

Only occasionally do I miss being a land surveyor.

Oh man... I have seen some s**t out in cornfields. Biggest orb weaver I've seen, I think, was about the size of a softball including it's legs. It's body was about the size of a pinball.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Enjoy when she shits out 200 little runt spiders that go all over your home into the cracks, in the attic, then create 60000 more spiders, and then you go insane hiring a $500 clean-up crew to spray them.

All because you're homo over 1 fat spider.

 

[Murloc]

if it's outside but too close to a window or a passageway, I'd just take a broom and move it away while destroying the web in the process.

I just kill everything that I find in the house because they're usually typical domestic spiders and I don't want to discover 100s of minispiders some time after because I had mercy.

 

[nixium]

Enjoy when she shits out 200 little runt spiders that go all over your home into the cracks, in the attic, then create 60000 more spiders, and then you go insane hiring a $500 clean-up crew to spray them.

All because you're homo over 1 fat spider.

You do realize there are things that eat spiders right? And that's the reason the world isn't just one mass web full of spiders?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Enjoy when she shits out 200 little runt spiders that go all over your home into the cracks, in the attic, then create 60000 more spiders, and then you go insane hiring a $500 clean-up crew to spray them.

All because you're homo over 1 fat spider.

That's really not how it works.

 

[vi edit]

We just had a brief war on yellow jackets that nested in the ground right next to our front walk. I poisoned them, then that night something came along along and dug out the nest. Left about a 3 gallon hole in our yard and probably four square feet of chewed up paper nest. I'm not sure whether to be more concerned that yellow jackets can build that much nest in a week or that something haunts my yard that eats yellow jackets coated in hornet spray and can dig that kind of hole overnight.

Same thing happened in my side yard. I was mowing and noticed a frenzied swarm of yellow jackets right before I passed over that spot. Got a can of spray and hit them a bit with it. The next day I went back and something had dug out the hole. You could fit two basketballs into that pit. The papercomb innards of their prior living arrangements were strewn about in a 10' radius around the hole.

What the hell does that?

 

[SunnyD]

Same thing happened in my side yard. I was mowing and noticed a frenzied swarm of yellow jackets right before I passed over that spot. Got a can of spray and hit them a bit with it. The next day I went back and something had dug out the hole. You could fit two basketballs into that pit. The papercomb innards of their prior living arrangements were strewn about in a 10' radius around the hole.

What the hell does that?

Racoon, skunk, bear...

 

[rudeguy]

Racoon, skunk, bear...

skunk would be my first thought.

Maybe a possum?

 

[vi edit]

I was thinking honey badger but they aren't indignious to Illinois

Whatever it was, they were productive.

 

[werepossum]

Same thing happened in my side yard. I was mowing and noticed a frenzied swarm of yellow jackets right before I passed over that spot. Got a can of spray and hit them a bit with it. The next day I went back and something had dug out the hole. You could fit two basketballs into that pit. The papercomb innards of their prior living arrangements were strewn about in a 10' radius around the hole.

What the hell does that?

Got me. We have tons of coons, so that's probably the best bet. We have one with four kits who practically lives around our house even though we don't feed them and indeed, knock the fool out of them. (Neighbor hand feeds them so they have zero fear of people - except me. They growl and advance on my wife.) Skunks are more typically diggers in my experience, but I've never seen skunks dig so deeply or widely, mostly just digging out grubs. We don't see one bear a decade and those are typically rapidly moving through, so I can't imagine it's a bear digging in my front yard. Tennessee doesn't have badgers or wolverines and damned few weasels (which are not great diggers anyone in my limited experience) so it almost has to be skunks or raccoons. We do have opossums, but again, I've never seen them do a lot of digging.

 

[vi edit]

Fox is another option I guess. They can dig like crazy.

 

[T9D]

Keeping a spider around to eat bugs is like keeping a turd eating bear around to eat dog turds.

You're keeping a problem around that is bigger than the original problem.

 

[Fritzo]

She stays outside, I don't smash her ass into oblivion. And not in the good way.

My wife and I have the same understanding.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Keeping a spider around to eat bugs is like keeping a turd eating bear around to eat dog turds.

You're keeping a problem around that is bigger than the original problem.

Laughably false. First of all, in what way is the spider a problem? The spiders around our house never present a problem to us, but I know they're a menace to mosquitoes and other bugs that do actually bother us.

 

[rh71]

proof that there is no god

 

[Gillbot]

only bumping the to say i hope the cable guy isn't afraid of spiders. he's showing up tonight to get me all hooked up, and, well, the girl here... Her home sits right over top of my phone interface box outside, which just so happens to share a conduit with the cable line.

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahhaaa

 

[SunnyD]

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahhaaa

Yeah fuck you too buddy. :'(

 

[Iron Woode]

She stays outside, I don't smash her ass into oblivion. And not in the good way.

Methinks she didn't take too kindly to the little dude (or dudette?) that decided to drop by today.

I've been watching her hang out in this spot and grow for the last month or two. It's pretty impressive, she's already about twice as big as she was last month.

Argiope aurantia are really cool spiders.

she molted in the web. the male has already visited her and she will be laying an egg sac or 2 in the next month or less.

they are pretty harmless to humans.

 

[SunnyD]

Argiope aurantia are really cool spiders.

she molted in the web. the male has already visited her and she will be laying an egg sac or 2 in the next month or less.

they are pretty harmless to humans.

She was nomming on something this evening. Couldn't quite tell what it was, but she seemed quite happy with dinner.

 

[Iron Woode]

She was nomming on something this evening. Couldn't quite tell what it was, but she seemed quite happy with dinner.

I used to see hundreds of them every summer when I was a kid.

I even saw one that managed to catch a cicada.

I used to catch a few and put them in our gardens. They seemed to do very well there.

 

[Gillbot]

Yeah fuck you too buddy. :'(

Comcast appointments are always +/- a week or more in my experience.

 

[Gillbot]

Comcast appointments are always +/- a week or more in my experience.

Son, I am disappoint.....

 

[T9D]

Laughably false. First of all, in what way is the spider a problem? The spiders around our house never present a problem to us, but I know they're a menace to mosquitoes and other bugs that do actually bother us.

No totally correct. Just wait until they have babies and you have thousands of them. Flying through the air trying to catch the wind. Blowing all over you. Climbing on everything. Leaving webs in every nook and corner of your house when they finally find their way in, which they will. Not to mention their are other spiders that can be more vicious or dangerous that will eat these spiders. So you will be drawing those really bad ones in too.

The answer is to kill every single bug and spider in the vicinity

 

[BladeVenom]

You're keeping a problem around that is bigger than the original problem.

That spider can kill over a thousand insects a year. Would you rather have one spider or a thousand flies?