Weekly Invertebrate Blogging: Our Backyard Shelob

As promised, October is spider month.

Our first model on the runway is a local girl, an orb weaver of a type that is very common in the gardens of Brooklyn. I nicknamed this lovely lady "Shelob" after the gargantuan spider that menaced Sam and Frodo in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Shelob has been with us all summer. When we first noticed her, she was only about as big as a dime, and she was sharing our tiny dirty patch out back with another similar spider. Over the summer, Shelob continued to remake her web in different spots in the yard. Sometimes she would build the web right across our back stairwell, and I'd have to eminent domain her ass. She's stubborn though, and no matter how many times she was forced to relocate by her evil landlords, she's be back in another spot within a day. Once, her web even showed up stretched across our backdoor window on the inside of the house! (cue minor chord)

She's now slightly bigger than a quarter, an her latest web stretches between on of our ever so stylish resin chairs and the back stairwell. It's kind of in the way, but the look she gave me the last time I photographed suggested I might be advised to leave her alone.

DISCLAIMER: No Jessamys were harmed in the process of photographing this arachnid.

Shelob enoys the fruits of her labor.
Shelob sulks in the foliage under the deck after I "relocated" her one afternoon. She didn't talk to me for a week.
The belly of the beast.	Yeeeeesh!
Dude, dude, dude I am on your backdoor.

Comments

[Dope]

is she still there after all this rain? you know, itsy bitsy spider and alla that.

Hard to say since we're still in Tennessee visiting folks. We saw all the rain on the news. I just hope my basement isn't flooded. Sounds like you guys got hammered.

[42]

is she still there after all this rain? you know, itsy bitsy spider and alla that.

[Dope]

Yeah. Best to let sleeping spiders lie.

[The Fixer]

I got a hairy thing like that lving next to the front doorbell button. Been there since spring. He's got a huge web (lotsa sucked-dry bug corpses in it) but he's stayed out of the way so I left him there.