The AM Forum

Definitely the biggest spider I've seen around here. There was no way I was going to try and hold a ruler next to him  :o but he's an easy 2" long and 1-1/2 wide. He was hanging on his web about the foot under the eves in a nice shady area. 

Sorry for the phone pic, but does someone wanna take a crack at ID'ing this beast.

Friendly looking fellow,  you should have been able to get a measurement, if you work fast enough.

Where did you see this guy, north, south, where??

Here in NJ I see some spiders at least 3" across.

Fred

Argiope aurantia - Yellow garden spider.

Ron W8ACR

  Where's my .38?

/Dan

Yep. Was googling around a bit and found it. I didn't know there were 500+ species of spiders in CT. I had a Rose hair tarantula when I was younger and she was the coolest pet. When she was cold, I would stick my hand in her enclosure and she would come running right up onto my arm looking for warmth. I could kick back in a chair and she would walk around looking for any bare skin, like under my collar, and lay her abdomen down to warm up. She made it to 11 years old. Males were out of steam around 4 years. Never got bit once.

you think that's big you should see some of the wood spiders around here.  Their bodies are the size of my thumb.  And they pop  when you step on them.  they don't like weed trimmers either.  The splat is something to behold.

Hi,

Hey don't kill it that's a good friend there they clean up bugs in your garden around the house ETC..

73
Jack
KA3ZLR

We have an arachnologist here. Nice.

I used to find them out in the field, capture them and release them in the bushes next to the house.  The next day, they would have re-spinned a web.  I would catch bugs under the lamp at night, put them in a jar, and then feed  the spiders the next day by dropping the bugs into the web.

Gently touch its back (the yellow part). Watch it perform a trapeze act, swinging to and fro in the web.  They are harmless.  I used to catch them in my hand and drop them in the jar, or even a shirt pocket, to bring home to populate the bush.

Yep, us hams know our spiders.   

Working on antennas for the last 45yrs or so, I would always find a small white spider up in the space between the mast and the brackets.  It was the strangest thing to find one of these little guys on nearly every antenna.  I called them antenna spiders.  Didn't have the foggiest idea what the hell they were doing way up at a antenna.  Never saw more than one on each antenna.

Fred

Every once in awhile a spider finds it's way into my BC-610 PA tuning cap. Bang it goes quite loudly!

I just relocated one of these last week from a tomato plant. Seeing it reminded me of running through a field of tall grass behind my grandfather's house as a kid. The grass was as tall or taller than me. And there was the gigantic spider, resting all stretched out in the center of its web waiting for its prey, as I ran through the web, wrapping it, and the spider, around my face. Not a pleasant memory! *twitch*

Looks like our Louisiana Banana spiders.  They come out after the summer solstice and trap many mosquitoes and flies another unwanted pests.  I welcome them.

(http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width/hash/61/8d/618d59e37738c378fec1c9a8a17dd6bd.jpg)

We used to call them Golden orb, or golden garden spiders.

A bit creepy looking but totally harmless.

My wife's flower gardens are filled with them every year.  They are definitely creepy looking! 

Last month our long hair Siamese came out of the garden with one hitching a ride on her back, I removed it before the cat brought it into the house.

Hi,

For some reason we called them Potato Spiders.
But they are good to have around...


73
Jack
KA3ZLR

The yellow garden spiders usually start showing up in these parts in late August.  Eventually make a brown, round egg sack, tucked away in a protected nook for the winter, then the spider dies.

I don't squish black widows any more. If I find them outside, I just leave them alone.  If in the house, shed, etc. I put on leather work gloves, capture the spider and release it outdoors. They used to be very common, but I rarely see them now.

OTOH, I squish every brown recluse I see. Those things are bad news... and very abundant in amongst my radio junk collection. I had seen them around for as long as I can remember, but didn't know what they were, so never paid much attention to them until someone I knew got bitten on the leg. I had thought the black widow was the only poisonous spider in this part of the country. The greatest danger seems to be when they find their way under a person's clothing, like a trouser leg or shirt sleeve.

Todd, You made me smile when I read your post. I think all country kids in Texas have run into garden spider webs. You would hurt yourself beating yourself around the head and shoulders because you just knew that big sucker was on you. I'm twitching also just from the memory. I'm just glad there were no cameras around when it happened. I'm sure that I put on quite a show.   ;D ;D ;D

Mike

No reason to twitch.  Those big yellow spiders aren't going bite, scratch or eat you. I used to freak people out by letting them see the spider crawl up my bare arm. They are very docile. You can capture them in your hand and they usually won't even wiggle if you hold them gently and don't pinch or squeeze them.

I like the antenna spiders...... worth 5 db

The first time I ran into a garden spider I was about 10 years old and was walking through my grandfather's cornfield with my cousin. I had never seen anything like it, and was properly terrified that such things actually existed in my world. My cousin and I promptly caught it in a coffee can and subjected it to the usual 10 year-old analysis, which ended badly for the spider.

Speaking of spiders, before the storm rolled through CT last week, I stopped by the public library and helped clear the furniture off the outdoor reading area. While hauling in one of the big shade umbrellas I got stung (bitten?) by a nasty unidentified spider that I immediately killed (squashed, flattened, smeared, and totally destroyed) as it attempted to sprint away. The "stung" area felt very similar to a sting from a yellow-jacket, but was much more intense. I ended up with a 3" x 2" black and blue area that burned and itched for several days, until the venom was finally absorbed. The effects of the sting are completely gone now 1 week later. I have seen the necrotic tissue problem that can result from being bitten by a brown recluse and that is not a pretty sight. It can take a year or two for one of those wounds to resolve. I hate all those critters, especially when they are in MY world!

Rob W1AEX 

We called them field spiders since we lived in the big capital city of Montpelier (pop. 8500 then) at the time where they weren't seen as often. This one was probably 2-4 inches across, which translated to several feet in childhood measurement conversion. And that webbing is very sticky, works as intended and designed. The wrap-around effect of the web as you run through it tends to paste the spider squarely on your face, which is a recipe for sheer panic. Harmless or not, visions of those killer Sci-Fi spiders from the 60s and before tend to flash through your mind, making rational thought like 'just stop and remove it' unthinkable. Running for your life while screaming seems to make far more sense, perhaps in hopes that if you pick up enough speed, the spider will blow off.

There are a lot of black widows down here, I've squashed a number of them since moving in. One was the size of a quarter, most are small. Turns out those little gink lizards like the one hanging out behind my 75A-4 a while back love to eat spiders. The lizards get royal treatment as a result. They're just cool on a lot of levels, like the changing-neon colors.

Hnyellowjackets are another matter. There is a humorous story that floats around on this site as well as at NEAR-Fest and other places where AMers gather, involving a couple of intrepid souls who picked up a yagi from a list member - complete with hnyellowjacket community. It's funny everytime I hear it.

I would keep a close watch on it.  Sometimes the brown recluse bite has a delayed action effect. What you described sounds an awfully like that's what it was.

Another common critter we have here on my most-hated list is what I call flying red scorpions, AKA red wasps. Those things are very aggressive; sometimes they attack unprovoked, well away from their nests. Each of my kids got stung at least once when they were small, sitting in their chair minding their own business, when a red wasp flew down, landed on them and proceeded to sting.

Don,

As I got older I realized that garden spiders were harmless. But as a little kid in the country we knew that every spider was a tarantula that could jump 15 feet and would bite and kill you. It's just like snakes. There were only two kinds. If they were around water they were cottonmouths and everything else was a rattlesnake. That worked for me and my friends. None of us were ever bitten by a cottonmouth, rattlesnake or deadly jumping tarantula.  ;D ;D ;D

Mike

Rob said:
That's what happened to me when of those damn things bit me. I found the bastard and questioned its fate. If I should end its life then and there or should let it suffer from the poison from me. I decided on blunt force trauma!   ;)

Yeah and most taruntulas are harmless too.  It's funny how nature will make something look really scary as it's only real defense.  The ones are diminuitive and often hiding under peices of wood or what not are the ones to watch out for!  We have a lot of black widows out here in the south but they are really not agressive.  The brown recluse is the one that has caused more problems with people around here.

There babies live under our (and probably everyone else's) dock at our lake place.  They are called "Fishing Spiders" because they kill small fish that come near to the surface.  They can also breathe underwater for up to 15 minutes by using trapped air bubbles that attach to their bodies.  These spiders are very scary looking, but are not dangerous to humans.

(http://www.classeradio.com/dock_spider.jpg)

Nice pet Steve :)

I had a bit of spider phobia as a kid.  When I was 5 I went to a birthday party at the old Pontchartrain Beach amusement park (near New Orleans) and the haunted house was the type that you rode through in a little car.  Inside the spook house everything was spider webbed and when I tried to avoid them by ducking into the car I found out it had been festooned with spider webs also :(  I wasn't a happy kid!

Now spiders don't bother me much although I still grow tired of the webbing.  During a recent hiking trip to the Smokies it was obvious that I was the first tall person to use a number of the trails early in the morning.  But I had a little jumping spider living in my PC during my doctoral student days and I considered it to be a pet AND good luck charm.

Think your spiders are gross - check THIS!!   :o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EZ_vI7cWAI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EZ_vI7cWAI)

This brown recluse bite goes beyond belief... :o

Have a nice lunch.

T

My mother was bitten on the large toe by a brown recluse about 15 years ago.  She was walking in the backyard in sandles.  Took a day or 2 for the toxin to do its work. The toe swelled and kept swelling and started turning purple.  An ER visit determined it was a BR bite.  She suffered through several skin peels and a minor surgery.  Any later she would have lost the toe.  

I don't know if anyone else has this but if I walk through a spider silk string or even certain webs like cob webs I breakout into hives.  Some don't bother me but others do.  I haven't figured out which species irritates my skin.

Spider webs:  I read that a 1" diameter rope made of spiderweb strand is strong enuff to stop a 747 in mid flight.  Interesting that we still don't know how to artificially manufacture it.


Speaking of insects - today I took Yaz for a walk. He took care of business on a stop sign rail. Immediately out popped a swam of yellow jackets that were living in the ground at the base. They were dressed to kill and a few landed on his back. It was quite a scramble to clear them off and run.

Evidently they don't like the smell of o'line too much.

T

Or maybe they don't like being peed on. Most people don't.  ;)

Too bad we can't make artificial spider web rope. It would solve our antenna support and tower guy problems.

And you wouldn't even need to tie them off, just stick it to a branch and voila! Instant support.


hnyellowjackets.

Those big garden spiders are cool and very much appreciated in any garden just like the little common garter snakes here in NH that are also coded yellow and brown.

The most critically endangered animal in New Hampshire with only one population left in the state is the Timber Rattlesnake, a heavy black viper. The timber rattlesnake is the only snake in NH with vertical pupils. Rock crevices are used for shelter.

Yup!  Timber Rattlers used to live on Rattlesnake Island in New Hampshire (www.rattlesnakeisland.net (http://www.rattlesnakeisland.net)), which is where the island got its name.  People went so far as to burn the island over (back before anyone had a house there), and it didn't work - the snakes crawled deep into the rock crevasses that dominate the slopes of the island.  They brought hogs over (apparently hogs go after rattlesnakes), and this along with some professional snake hunters, finally eliminated the rattlesnakes from the island.  None have been seen since the late 1940s.

Personally, I'm glad they're gone from the island!

Regards,

Steve

How do you know this??