So somewhere between about 8am, and ’round 5pm today…..my new friend, Butch the Spider showed up.   Gotta look carefully, as the photo is a little deceptive, but he’s in there, right in the middle of the screen.

Lots of intriguing body markings up close, I think I even saw him smile when I said………wait for it……..cheese………….

We get lots of interesting spiders around our property this time of year.  This particular one, you know…….Butch……has spun a huge web across our front door walkway, with each juniper about 3 feet apart.  I couldn’t quite tell where the top of his web was anchored, but I’m pretty sure in the pine tree right above the walkway, lowest branch at least 10 feet up. The upline faded from my eyesight about half way up to the branch I think our good buddy descended from.

Normally one would assume Butch was after a fly or insect of some sort, but I’m on to him…….I think he was after the Papa Murphy Pizzas I brought home.   I googled Pizza eating Spiders, and yep, there I’m pretty sure I found a link to Butch’s Facebook page……

Once in awhile we get a spider in the house too, who doesn’t.  But twice now, we got abnormally large ones……not Tarantula sized, but big enough that I don’t dare “squish” them against the wall, as I’d swear it’d leave more mess than just wipe down, it would be a wipe down then paint touchup.   For whatever reason, I have a fascination of spiders, and I got a good photo of one of them, on a beam in our finished basement,  4 by 14 beams, on the 4 side, easily taking up half of the 4 inch side……with a shovel and a steady hand, I gave that spider a polite lift outside and off yonder wherever he/she might be.

Back to my fascination which isn’t so much with the spider itself, but more the web.   The web, it’s very light, yet strong.   Easily rebuilt, serves several purposes from trap to transportation, most seem to have a similar pattern to them, yet different too.  Why different is what intrigues me most, is it a fluke, random, the decision a spider makes at a given web spinning time, the wind, whatever, but I’ve seen this “Butch” spider 100’s of times, thru the years, around our property……..and the webs all very similar yet different too……so maybe one of these days I need to track down Butch and just ask him why……