Our pet spider

[gritsar]

Every night we observe and admire the work of a spider in our front yard.
We've tried to get a good look at her so we can identify her, with no luck. She builds her webs high, so it's impossible for us to get a good picture of her.
She's small, maybe a 1/4 of an inch long and appears to be reddish brown, with pointy legs.
Her work is amazing us!
Her webs are large - a few feet in diameter - and very intricate.
The other night she built her web on the archway above our gate. The interesting part was that one of her "anchor" strands ran all the way to my DH's patrol car, which was parked about 10 ft. away from her web.
Last night I looked for her and saw that she was very high up in a tree, at the center of her web. What really had me scratching my head though is that the anchor strand ran all the way to one of our pecan trees which is a good 30 ft. away!!
This ring a bell with anyone? We'd like to know what she is.

 

[NGT ANGL]

Sounds interesting! Do you have pics?

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
No, but my DH is off tonight and he might be able to rig up something with his camera and spotting scope so we can get a decent pic of her.
I know she must be riding on the breeze to create the anchor strands. How else could she travel 30 ft. thru the air?

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

It is fun to watch until you forget it is there and run into it with your face.

 

[gritsar]

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Maybe that's what I like about her! She builds them so high there's no chance of running into them, unless you're 20 ft. tall.

 

[jadeflower999]

I love spiders!

My guess is an Orbweaver, they do make big webs. Here's a link that describes some of the spiders you have in Arkanas:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4546518_identify-arkansas-spiders.html

And here's a page about the Hentz Orbweaver which is my best guess... http://kenfuller.exactpages.com/hentzs-orb0.html

Good luck!

 

[raroo]

I agree she sounds like a garden orbweaver we have tons of them over here. They can get really large sometimes and weave beautiful webs!

 

[gritsar]

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I do believe that's what she is. Hope to get a better look at her tonight.
We had a large spider, identified her, but I've forgotten the name, that lived under the eaves of our shop. She was awesome! I actually read of people offering that type of spider of food by placing it in her web. We never tried that. She had lots of egg sacs, but sadly she disappeared and we never saw any of her offspring.

 

[The Chicken Lady]

Wow, that makes me think of Charlotte's Web.