After spending a day hanging out on her egg sac, she disappeared around sunset. It was time to bring the cats in anyway, so I walked around to the backdoor with a flashlight to look for her. Mouse showed up just as I spotted her, skittering across the deck – yikes! She was HUGE down on the ground! Unfortunately Mouse saw her and pounced, and before I could step in to help, Charlotte grabbed a web and zipped back up out of the cat’s reach! I grabbed Mouse and took her inside. I checked on the spider a couple more times, and by evening she had dissapeared again, and hadn’t returned by this morning. So I’m thinking she’s done her job and gone. Now we just have to decide if we want to leave the eggs there and see if they hatch in the spring, or move them out to the orchard somewhere and let them hatch there – a little farther from the house!

It was certainly interesting having her around the last couple weeks and getting a close up view of what spiders do. Since I’m pretty scared of spiders, it was creepy but cool. I have a new respect for spiders now.

Well, our resident spider has continued to fascinate us. A few days ago she apparently decided the door was too busy for her, and was tired of us ducking under her web twenty times a day, and she moved over to the stationary side of the patio door. This made us happier too!

We were interested to see what her next move was. I read online that the male would show up and she would build an egg sac. But I don’t know how a male would find her up here on the house, so far away from the grass and bushes where I would expect him to be. Then we see a little spider show up (though he kept his distance). In the picture below you can see him way off to the left.

He’s less than an inch across, compared to her three inches! Apparently that was big enough to get the job done, because last night we looked out in the evening and saw her working on an egg sac!

This morning when we got up and went to check on her we saw this!!!

Well, was she busy all night or what?!!! The most interesting part is that her abdomen is significantly deflated compared to yesterday before she started. I guess it was full of eggs and web last night.

I happened to be looking in time to see the male scurry away, rappel to the ground and head for the hills. I don’t think he’s coming back, the male doesn’t always survive the encounter.

So she spent some of the day working on securing the egg sac to the window. Now that her job is done, she’s parked herself on it and is just sitting there. I read she will die when the frosts come, and the eggs are on their own until spring. When the young spiders hatch they’ll send out web ropes to catch the wind and move somewhere else. I’m very curious to see what happens next.

We have our very own Charlotte, though she hasn’t given us any messages in her web. She is hanging out on the back patio door. Luckily she managed to build her web in such a way that we can still open and close the door and go in and out without disturbing her. Of course, having to duck under her web disturbs US, because I fear clumsy spiders! But so far she has not fallen off on us.

She is a ‘Black and Yellow Garden Spider’, and I planned to move her out to the yard until I looked her up on wikipedia and discovered that despite her size (about 2 1/2 inches from tip to tip) she is not poisonous. Plus she does some interesting stuff, like rebuilding her web every evening, which has provided us a little ‘Wild Kingdom’ style entertainment.