Monday, June 18, 2007

FREAKING OUT

Okay, I know that I am a little bit nerdy, but this takes the cake. Why is it that spiders are so scary?
Since our lawn mower is still busted, I was outside attempting to make our yard look a little better, I was trimming the forest in the front yard (we have an aspen tree that sprouts miniature aspens all over the yard) And pulling the weeds. I also decided to spray off the house, we have mosquitoes like crazy, so we have to spray the house every once in awhile, especially in the summer. As I was doing all this, the kidlets were in their swimsuits playing in the yard. Piper came up to me and said, "Momma, the spider that likes our front door is back!" There is this Huge spider that hangs out on and around our porch, we just let it be. So, I went to look and sure enough, there he was, so I got the camera and took some pictures.










After I took some pictures, I told Piper that I was going to kill the spider and she started freaking out, so I didn't. I put the camera away and I came back to the front porch to do a little more weeding. THE SPIDER WAS GONE! HOLY CRAP! So I immediately started spraying the house with hopes of drowning the spider. I don't know where he went, but I'm hoping he is no longer. I am still getting the creeps while typing this entry.

When I was all done with the yard I came inside and did a search on the Internet to see if I could find any info on this peculiar spider. and I did find out what kind of spider it is and that he is harmless, however on the site it says that they are as far west as Colorado, I'm in Utah. The spider is called a Phidippus Audax, a Jumping Spider of the family Salticidae.

While I was searching, I found another spider that we have in our basement and around our house, they too freak me out mostly because they look freakin' psycho. They too are harmless. They are called a Sow Bug Killer Spider.

Here are the links:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com/spiders.html
Sow Bug Killer is about 3/4 of the way down the page.

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/spiders2.html
The Phidippus Audax Jumping Spider of the family Salticidae has two pictures, one is about 1/2 down the page, and the other is about 3/4 of the way down the page.

You MAY just get the heebie jeebies while looking at this site, but it is very interesting.

2 comments:

Queen Mother said...

Karlyn,

You are not alone. Spiders are SCARY. I would have freaked out and ran inside, never to come out again until the coast was clear.

Unknown said...

Ok I have a couple of comments about this, one-- be glad you don't live in Florida, that spider was pretty small! Number two, were you spraying your house with water to get the mosquitos off? Because if it was water doesn't water help them hatch and grow?? oh ya one more comment Aspens are my favorite tree!