This post contains photo’s of spiders.

If you don’t like ’em then look away now.  You have been warned.

I’m sort of only partially arachnophobic.  I really don’t like the house spiders you get in the UK, they’re small, but they’re fast, hairy, black and look like the predator spiders from nightmares.  Well, mostly they’re small.  I’ve always referred to them as ‘wolf spiders’, but that’s just a name I picked up for them as a kid I’ve no idea if it’s correct (quick research at this point suggests it’s not correct, the closest to wolf spider we get it this I think).  Anyway, I don’t like them because they’re quick, and because they make a very loud crunching sound when you whack them with the soul of your very heavy boots.

But I don’t really mind the kind of spiders you get in the garden.  Things like these, these, these and these.  I think they make some pretty impressive webs and unless I walk into one face first (have done, too often), I love watching them (from a distance!)  Due to the nature of our garden and how often we walk around it (not much) we get a lot of webs from these kind of spiders.  We recently noticed a pretty big web over the top corner of our kitchen door (outside), and as Grete was heading out around lunchtime for aqua-aerobics (first session, she loved it), I spotted a yellowish bulbous orb like thing stuck to the side of the doorframe at around knee height.

I told Grete to ‘not look back! keep moving!’ as she headed for the car, and once she was gone I er, deftly moved it off the doorframe with a flick from a piece of paper.  I don’t mind looking folks, but I ain’t about to go picking one up!

Closer inspection on the ground (spider was fine), show it to be what looks like a Common Orb Weaver, judge for yourself.  Only the first shot is in focus, it was on the move, I was bending down and couldn’t hold the camera still, and I was holding it pretty close to the spider, so sorry about the lack of focus.  First shot’s a corker though.  Check out the line of silk behind it in each of the shots.

Paint it black and it’d look like Shelob!