A Spider on Crack

For the first time in nature, I saw a black widow spider last night.  Unfortunately, "nature" turned out to  be right outside my back door.  Gary showed me a web yesterday and asked if I thought it was a black widow web.  I said, "Maybe, they are supposed to make wonky webs like that."  And the web was wonky.  Even if you don't like spiders (I do), you have to admit that the symmetrical pattern of a spider web is a beautiful thing.  This one though, not so much.  It looked trashy, if you must know.  Like the spider who made it didn't learn to weave and really didn't care. 

At Gary's request, I went and checked on the trashy web when it got dark and, lo and behold, there she was.  Or he.  Make it she.  Apparently the males don't have that red hourglass shape on them and our little lady certainly did.  I debated the idea of catching her and turning her  loose somewhere else but when I got a few inches away to try to photograph her, she kinda freaked out.  Most spiders move over their webs pretty gracefully so it never occured to me that a spider's grace was directly caused by the shape of it's web.  With its wonky web, this spider moved like it was on crack:  jittery, jerky and rather creepily.  Needless to say, I cancelled my capture and release plan and sadly, this spider is way too close to a high traffic area so it looks like her days are numbered. 

Pretty cool, huh?  I think you can double click the picture to see her even closer. And bigger.  =)