The Resident Patio Spider

::::WARNING: This post contains (lots of) photos of a spider::::

I have a faint memory of sometime in June, hearing all the boys outside having a conversation that went something like, "Here, feed it this!",  "Hey, throw this in the web!".  But it wasn't until after we returned from AudioFeed the first week of July that I actually went out to the patio and saw what they'd been feeding for weeks!  We had a resident Garden (or patio) Spider!

She was big.  And kinda interesting.

She ate and rebuilt the very middle of her web every night, but otherwise stayed put and was always in the same spot.

We noticed that she was growing at a rapid rate...  

and assumed it was from the diet of LARGE insects Miles was feeding her daily.

He was consistent about feeding this new 'pet'.

This video is a couple minutes long, but when she starts to wrap up the grasshopper, it's kinda crazy!  Even if you agree with me that spiders are gross and terrifying. 

One day, the boys came inside and said Mrs Spider, who they'd named "Orchid", had a male garden spider in the web with her.  When I saw this tiny spider, I didn't believe them.  But a quick Google search told us that it was a male! 

Orchid continued to grow surprisingly fast.  Then Miles went out on his morning routine check and immediately declared, "She's smaller!".  She was.  

And upon further inspection, we found an egg sack the size of a ping pong ball at the top of her web.

Yes, it's a gross spider.  But these guys have had so much fun watching the process. #science

Especially Miles, who seriously treated Orchid like a pet.

Owen goes right along with it all too.   He learned all about a spider's abdomen.  Haha!

They kept a very close eye on her...  :)

And if you heard me in the video saying, "She's getting fat again.", SHE WAS.  

There was soon a second egg sack.  

We did some more Google research and found some sites saying the Mama spider would die soon after laying eggs, or before the first frost.  So we let Miles keep her there for a while. 

When we returned from out of town over Labor Day (that post yet to come!), Orchid was gone, no longer in her web.  Derek waited until this week, then disposed of the egg sacks while no one was looking.  Or so we thought, Owen caught on and told Miles, who was pretty upset, but is fine now.  We read that each sack holds 300+ babies!  And we're not raising all those.  Sorry, Miles. 😢