look at this crazy spider

[marktwain]

This was at my brother's house the other day.  Can anybody identify and/or explain how it got to Kentucky?

[ratsprayer]

i cant see the pic too well, but i live in SW ohio, and we had one in our back yard that looked similiar to that.  i think theyre generically called garden spiders, but the fucker had a body the size of a quarter.  massive.  im still looking around to get a proper name for it, ill let you know.

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

yo, that's a Garden Spider....



as far as I can tell from your photo...they are quite common here.  I've got one nest of em at the old house.  they love my shed, for some reason...

[EC]

Wow.  I've had some pretty intense critter situations in this house, but I would lose my fucking shit if I saw a motherfucker like that hanging around.

That reminds me.  We saw the BIGGEST spider I have EVER seen in the Mammoth Cave campground.  Jen couldn't sleep.  (She's petrified of spiders.)  It. was. so. big.  Maybe it was a garden spider.  Actually, we saw a pretty big one in the cave, too..

[SMc55]

That looks enornous Tundra. How big do you reckon? I can't tell the size of the window.

[ratsprayer]

i dont know about his there in the pic, but the one in our webbing up against our fence had a body about the size of a fucking US quarter.   :o

[Jellyfish]

http://www.sdnhm.org/fieldguide/inverts/argi-aur.html

[marktwain]

Thanks, guys - I think it IS a garden spider.  We'd never seen one before, and I was freaking out.  I thought that thing had hopped a flight from Costa Rica or something.  The body is (as some have said) easily the size of a quarter. (about 1 inch or 2.5 cm) The web covered the entire window.

[SMc55]

Wow it looks weird. We don't have spiders that size in the wild as far as I know. Too cold I reckon.

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

hmmmmmmmmmmm...I'm thinking you do, but you haven't seen them.  They do have a range that goes into Canada....

maybe Tundra could name the spider "Boris"....

[primushead]

Has anyone heard of those spiders in the amazon that eat small birds?

[SMc55]

hmmmmmmmmmmm...I'm thinking you do, but you haven't seen them.  They do have a range that goes into Canada....

Maybe you're right, but I don't want to know about it  :-/

Hey does anybody remember the time somebody posted those strange photos he developed from a camera he 'found' in the woods? I was taken in for a while. That had some spider things.

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

hey, wasn't that scott (tundra)?

and we remember this, of course...

[Tree]

Has anyone heard of those spiders in the amazon that eat small birds?

yeah i think i heard of them!
but has anyone heard of the "Bullet Ants" ??????
they´re really crazy!!   :)

[marktwain]

hey, wasn't that scott (tundra)?

and we remember this, of course...

Wasn't me.  I'm not that creative.  But I do remember that monster falling on your head - weren't you dropping acid in the park?

[primushead]

yeah i think i heard of them!
but has anyone heard of the "Bullet Ants" ??????
they´re really crazy!!   :)

yeah!  i saw a thing on those ants on discovery channel a while back.  Those are nuts...bad idea to approach them.

[sweatboard]

You know what freaks me the fuck out?  Those bugs that are so big they make audible sounds.  I tried to kill this gigantic roach one time and it started screaming at me. :'(

[primushead]

Are you kidding me?  What kind of bug?  Bugs have VOCAL CHORDS?!?!

[DD]

its nice to see the garden spiders returning.  for a while they were hard to find.  a lot lived on farms and such and were getting killed off by the pesticides.

when we were kids they were ALL OVER my friends farm in the corn and inbetween all the trees.  at night we would play hide and seek and like run through their webs and FREAK OUT because they were so big and creepy looking.  i have a few in my garden now.  one has an egg sac this season so hopefully there will be even more next year.

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

Wasn't me.  I'm not that creative.  But I do remember that monster falling on your head - weren't you dropping acid in the park?

oh how I wish!  nope, just happened to come along while I was NOT tripping...