My spiders!

I was basically terrified of spiders.

Once, about 6 years ago, I walked into a largish spider, hanging from a thread, inside my house. My daughter noticed it crawling on me, and, from the look on her face, I knew something was on me. I looked down and saw this hairy creature walking up my shirt. The next 15 seconds are a terrified blur of dancing, stamping and shrieking.

When we were considering buying our current home, the real estate agent was showing us around the house. We noticed this extremely large spider, with very long legs, curled up in one of the closets. It was almost 5 cm in diameter, counting its long legs, and it was black and hairy. I suppressed a shudder, but figured it was dead. I pointed it out, and the real estate agent came over and gently prodded it with a pencil. Suddenly, it unfolded its legs and started moving. I let out a very unmanly scream and flew into the other room, while he carried it outside on his clipboard.

Despite this irrational fear, I have always been fascinated by spiders. Some of them are incredibly beautiful, like the brightly-colored Argiope orb weavers. Some of them are incredibly large, like tarantulas. All of them are extremely interesting.

Anyway, I discovered, after rather much trial and error, that my digital camera, a Nikon CoolPix 990, can take reasonably good close-up pictures of small things. Lately, I have been observing their arachnid dramas and snapping their pictures.

If you want to use these pictures, I will likely agree to allow their use, even for commercial purposes. But please ask. I have higher resolution versions of all of them, too, if necessary.

I found most of these spiders on the outside my house, and I am learning more about them and their life cycles. If you know anything else about these spiders, please let me know!

I leave spiders alone when they are in my house, but I don't think they like it here, generally. Whenever I capture pictures of one I found in the house, they appear to be emaciated and dull, often missing legs or pedipalps. Because of this, I now take them outside. The one exception are the large Tegenaria spiders. I think they do like it in the house, because they always seem healthy when I find them here. I suppose this is why they are called "house spiders." :)

Special note: I have had the great good fortune to stumble across one of the few people who could help me identify these creatures, Rod Crawford, from the Burke Museum at the University of Washington. He has been extremely helpful and patient in helping me identify these animals and pointing me towards resources that will allow me to learn more about them. Thanks Rod!

NEW!!! Rod Crawford, our regional spider expert, has recently put up a great web site exposing many, if not most, of the myriad myths about spiders. If you suffer from an irrational fear of spiders, please visit the Spider Myths Site BEFORE you tell everyone that mysterious welt on your arm was caused by a spider bite "while you were sleeping".