The Natural World of the Drake Residence
As a kid I was very frightened by spiders and insects, and even as an adult I don’t like them very much. For that reason I make a point of not smashing them unless they’re harmful and there’s no other way to deal with them. Wolf spiders are aggressive and large ones will run across a room to bite a person sitting on the floor, but I will even shoo them out of the house if possible instead of killing them. I’m training myself out of the normal human reaction of killing things that are ugly and frightening.
Web spiders, however are completely harmless unless you’re an insect, so we’ve let this one–possibly a tufted-leg orb weaver–stay on the outside stairs which join the upper deck to the lower one (where I normally work). Jo got this shot in mid-October, while I happened to be in the background.
Happy Halloween!
Halloween Spider