This is our "pet" spider, Josephine Anne Clifford. (click on the picture to see a HUGE blown-up pic of her...hairs on the legs and all!)Anyone who knows me really well knows that I'm terrified of spiders. I don't care if they're .000003 inches long or a foot long. The eight-legged, multiple eyes, creepy-crawly insanity usually has me heading for the hills. But Jo, as we call her, is different somehow. So here's the story of how I made friends with a spider.
I was heading out to the back deck of our condo one day to put my (pathetic, dying) ivy plant on the railing so it could get some sun, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by a MASSIVE spiderweb and a spider roughly the size of a Volkswagen. I went, "What in the hell is that?!?!" to which Husband replied, "Oh, that's Joe." For some bizarre reason, giving the spider a name made it less scary to me, and I've actually been cool since then with the thing living on the outside of the sliding glass door to the deck.
You may have noticed the inconsistent spelling of our spider's name in this post so far. That's because we were operating under the assumption that any spider that big had to be male. Well, we were wrong, according to a field guide about spiders that I found on the bookshelf in my room at my parents' house last week. This book was clearly purchased for me by my parents when I was a kid in an attempt to make me less arachnophobic...maybe they figured if I took the time to learn about spiders, I wouldn't be so afraid of them. Yeah, not so much. Anyway, we looked "Joe" up and compared the pictures in the book to what "he" looked like, and then cross-referenced that with pictures on the awesome website whatsthatbug.com, and deduced that "Joe" was actually a girl (hence "Jo", short for "Josephine"...we're weird) and is a garden, or cross spider, Araneus diadematus (for anyone out there who is a nerd).
Jo seems to know that we're cool with her as long as she doesn't come inside the house, wherein she would immediately go squish at the hand of Husband (most likely while I was curled up in the fetal position somewhere in the vicinity of the attic), or else Psycho Cat would use her as a protein supplement to her Iams Weight Control cat food. When we open the door to go outside to the grill or something, she runs up a thicker line of her web to what we call her "upstairs", which is the track for the slider at the top of the door. At night she comes down and hangs out in the middle of her web, where she seriously captures like every bug in Fairfield County. She's very efficient and it's cool (although kind of grody) to watch her either eat her dinner, or wrap it up a la Shelob in Lord of the Rings to eat later.
The one thing we can't figure out, though, is why she hasn't had any spider babies yet. Not that we're complaining, because honestly I don't think I want miniature Jo's running around, even if they are outside. I guess she just hasn't found a mate. And with the weather getting cooler, I doubt if she will. Of course, she could have had her babies earlier in the summer before she "moved in" and we just didn't see them...who knows. Anyway, I know eventually it will get too cold for her or a bird will eat her or something, and then, I will actually be sad. Weird for me to say that, since I've spent all my life cowering in fear from spiders, but I guess we like having her hang around (no pun intended).
