Up close and personal

I just had an interesting study break. One of the advantages of having a laptop is that I can work at home as well as in my office. I was in the middle of doing some study for Sunday’s message at home this afternoon when Robert came running in the house saying, “Dad! Come look! I just found the biggest black widow spider I’ve ever seen!” I grabbed the camera on the way out, and sure enough, she was a beauty! Click on either picture for a closer look. Better yet, check out this high resolution shot.

She’s on the decorative housing that holds our garden hose. Robert had been using the hose and the housing had gotten yanked out of place. He was just getting ready to grab it with both hands to move it back, when he spotted her. Wow! He said that his hand was less than a foot away from her and he just happened to see her move. Close call! Be sure to look closely at this second picture. While we were checking her out, we noticed what appeared to be a whole slew of little black widow babies fresh out of the egg sac. Neither mom nor offspring survived the nearly half-a-can of Raid we shared with them.