Ah! Spiders!!!!
 

While I can't compare to the lube meister with his close up captured photos of spiders...I've had some issues here and there with some fairly large spiders in my yard.

Man I wish I was infested with Lizards. Lizards I can handle - spiders gross me and the wife out.

Anyway, this one was in my yard this morning (Wife told me about the web yesterday evening).

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159885718.jpg

Unfortunately the photo is rather blurry but it's the best I could do. I sprayed some chemicals on it and it fell to the ground never to be seen again. I wanted to capture it and ID it. This is the second one of this size that I have found in a week in about the same area. Not really sure what to do about it - my main concern is if they are actually dangerous or not. Right below the picture is my kid's play set. The web is about 3 feet in diameter and the spider was about the diameter of a 50 cent piece (legs included, not just the body).

I've done a little research on the net and it may be an "orb spider" but I'm not sure and without a better picture of one I can't expect a good solid ID - or an answer to the danger question.

I thought I had these guys licked...I had trimmed a lot of vegetation back which seemed to be keeping them down to a manageable size and keeping them relatively out of site. Seems like when ever I think that however september comes around and there they are again!

AH! I got the willies!

I'm ok with spiders as long as I don't walk face first into their web or they don't crawl on me or any furniture that I'm using.

It's probably not too dangerous as long as you don't molest it. The two most dangerous that you see around are the black widow and brown recluse, and that's not either one of those.

If you hate spiders you would hate my place...
I just moved to the Okanagan from Calgary. In Calgary the biggest spiders around were daddy long legs, and the odd cap spider, you would see maybe one or two of them a year.
When we moved into the house I counted 5 spinders larger than a loonie (including legs). 2 of them were the strange orange ones in the picture above, 3 of them were HUGE black ones. Their body alone was the size of a loonie. You could actually feel the crunch squishing them.
Now they are all over the outside of the house. There are probably 50-100 spiders of this size on the outside of my house. I keep going outside and blasting them all with the hose, but that only gets rid of them for a day or two. I look around and they are everywhere, even on the neighbor's house, I think they're normal around here.

Good news is that the orange spiders aren't dangerous. I forget what they are, but I looked them up. If they bite you odds are you won't feel it, and there are very minor toxic effects. The most you would get is a small red lump (like a mosquito bite).
The ones to worry about are....
Black Widows (I have these in the garage..... don't go out there often!)
Brown Recluses (brown spiders with violin shape on the back, very dangerous)
Hobo Spiders (you might not have these in your area, they're from europe and are very selective about their habitats)

Have I cheered you up at all?

Orb Weavers.

Well, no. I don't feel better at all actually...we get them weaving their webs where ever the like, typically between a tree and the house. I would say cutting back the tree might help but they really do go to great lengths.

Mostly during the summer we'll have one go between the magnolia and the house. Which is a good 15 foot span, one night I watched him build it and it's pretty amazing to watch. The problem is that span covers our main walk way and we have to watch out or get tangled up in it. It's creepy. This one in the back yard is as I said the second one of this size in a week that I have had to pull down. I Went out there again before I went to work this morning and he wasn't dead - probably pissed - but not dead. I saw him up in the tree. This is the kind of spider that if you tried to step on it - it would push back.

Yeah. Gross. When they are big enough to have "guts" I get pretty grossed out.

-shiver-

We had similar spiders in Korea - We used to call them "mancatchers" because they would string their webs across two trees that you would inevitably walk through at night.

Their bite can be painful, but is generally harmless.

AFJ

What the heck is a loonie?

The brown garden spiders are pretty common in S. Cal. this time of year. I presume they are harmless otherwise I would be dead, I have walked into their webs more times than I can count.

I was messing with the sprinklers yesterday and saw some small round black spiders. Picked up a can of spider poison at home depot and I am going to blast them.

I get em in my backyard from August to October. Got a big one back there right now:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159904218.jpg

Common garden spider. Ditto on the Orb Weaver.
Heres one from my yard.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159904751.jpg

We have loads of the big garden spiders right now. Generally they start building their webs around dusk. They are harmess but like you I get creeped out when I stumble into a web...some of which get so huge they feel like rubber bands. We leave them alone as they are helping to control the flying pests - black widows on the other hand recieve a quick visit from Mr. Stick.

For your pleasure

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159909973.jpg

This is a Saint Andrews Cross spider and this baby is 8-9 inches from end to end. The Body is a bit under 2 inches. We get these at work and this was on the window of our HR manager. I think it may be one of her children.

THAT would do more than push back if you stepped on it. It would stand up and say "Hey, if you don't stop that I'm going to cut you up so good you wish I no cut you up so good."

DAMN!

Some of them actually pack iron and wear cowboy hats. "Sir" is usually what we say to them.

do they vote?

Found this in our backyard a couple of years ago.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159919143.jpg

Ah, what memories...in Germany we'd get hundreds of spiders in the beams (open beam ceiling house)...every month or so we'd have to vacuum them out. Kinda looked liked daddy long legs. The name in German for spiders is spinners (sp??) Never got rid of them, just kept them out of sight. The really nasty looking ones though were these big wolf looking spiders that were about the size of a silver dollar+....kids wouldn't sleep against the walls because you never knew when one would crawl by....there was this dark night when.....ah, another time..

Die Spinne\Die Spinnen

What the heck is a loonie?... It's half as valuable as a toonie, that's what!

That or it's a dollar coin that we use up here in the frozen north.
See, there aren't enough metal posts for everybody to stick their tongues to when it gets cold, so we decided to convert more and more of our currency to metal coins so that we can stack them to make more metal poles to stick our tongues to.

I got caught in an Orb Weaver's web once... while riding my dirt bike down a trail! I was coming down a trail and saw that the spider had built a web that basically blocked the entire trail. I locked up the brakes. When I slid to a stop the spider was hanging from my visor just an inch from my face.

BTW, Last week I went "hunting" in my backyard... killed three black widows and two scorpions. I love Arizona.

I ******* hate digital cameras for this sort of thing but I went outside tonight to see what might be going on out there and right outside my back door I find suspect #2. Not as big but it was getting started...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159942123.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1159942171.jpg

If this keeps up I will never sleep again.