{"id":9001,"date":"2016-08-20T19:36:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T23:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9001"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:55:15","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:55:15","slug":"zip-it-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9001","title":{"rendered":"Zip it good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amanda wanted badly to tell me something about the house, but she’d only met me a few hours before. She didn’t know how I’d react.<\/p>\n

She turned to her mom. “Should we tell her about… you know…”<\/p>\n

Judy looked at her daughter, face frozen.<\/p>\n

“The lady<\/em>,” Amanda said. “You know. Out back.”<\/p>\n

Judy said, “Sure.”<\/p>\n

It’s our first day in the rental house. I’m thinking,\u00a0Uh-oh. This is when I find out about the dead bodies in the garage that they didn’t mention in the lease.<\/em><\/p>\n

Amanda still hesitated. “Well, this might sound really weird, but…”<\/p>\n

I really do hope I’m\u00a0wrong about the bodies.<\/p>\n

Then her words came out in a rush.<\/p>\n

“There’s this spider<\/em>. She’s really \u00a0big, but it’s OK, she’s not poisonous or harmful. She has bright colors and she’s amazing! She’s so beautiful, we don’t want to kill her.”<\/p>\n

“Great!” I said. Phew! A big spider! Thank God.<\/em><\/p>\n

Amanda\u00a0still seemed\u00a0a bit concerned\u00a0that I would turn out to be a secret spider murderer, though. “So we hope that, you know…”<\/p>\n

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I won’t kill her. People kill spiders and spray toxic chemicals around for no good reason, but most spiders are harmless and they are all helpful.”<\/p>\n

“Yes!” Amanda said, “and they will\u00a0eat insects that people also try to kill.”\u00a0Yep. About 2,000 a year, according to one estimate.<\/p>\n

She is a beauty.<\/p>\n

\"garden<\/p>\n

This spider, I learned from a search, is\u00a0Argiope aurantia<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>a “common” garden spider, though I’ve never run across one before.<\/p>\n

It’s also called a writing spider or zipper spider because of the unique, ladder-like zigzag spun into the middle of its huge orb\u00a0web.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The function of this ladder is unclear. Possibly it prevents birds from flying into the web and destroying a day’s work.<\/p>\n

The female garden spider’s\u00a0body can be an inch and a half long, up to three times the size of the male.<\/p>\n

They mate in the fall. Then she eats him, lays her eggs, and dies soon after.<\/p>\n

A pretty full life, for\u00a0just one year.<\/p>\n

An odd trait is that this spider may sometimes eat its own web every night and rebuild it the next day.<\/p>\n

Our Lady of the Rental does not seem to be doing that. Most of the time she’s not moving.<\/p>\n

I did observe her eating some prey that seemed to be still alive. It was so wrapped up that I couldn’t tell what it had originally been; I suppose it could have been her mate, even.<\/p>\n

In this video I shot, you can see her sucking some liquid from it.<\/p>\n