Speaking of big bugs

[tking]

Killer wasps, Joe's horsefly (or whatever it was...lol), and now our resident bug eater. Haven't seen this guy or his relatives this year, but usually every year we have one of them in our four o'clock bushes. This is a full grown grasshopper he's wrapping up, so it should give you some idea of his size.

[JBaker45]

And what a handsome fellow this spider is.

[Joe S]

We get those things too, but they never show up until the very last of summer. If you aggrevate them they will shake the web violently. They are colorfull and I generally leave them be. We get great big round spiders too in the last of summer / first of fall. I hope when they show up they eat all the killer flies.

[Tallen]

Killer wasps, Joe's horsefly (or whatever it was...lol), and now our resident bug eater. Haven't seen this guy or his relatives this year, but usually every year we have one of them in our four o'clock bushes. This is a full grown grasshopper he's wrapping up, so it should give you some idea of his size.

Is that a spider? It's hard to tell how many legs that ugly thing has. :medium-smiley-098:

BTW, I think it is this one.

Yellow Garden Spider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_garden_spider)

[tking]

Yep, that's what it is. I'm going to look for another picture I have of a spider that I've never really found in references. It was on our wheat drill one year when we went to move it. It's at least double the size of this spider and is sort of pinkish and black colored. It's absolutely the biggest spider I've ever seen outside the tarantulas we have around here. I took a picture of it, but it's buried in all my old hard copy photos. If I can ever find it, I'll scan it and post it. That thing made both John and I take a wiiidddeee path around it while we were getting the drill ready...lol. In the end, we didn't have any choice but to kill it to get to to the part of the drill we needed to. Kinda sad...but...we hadda do it.

[Tallen]

OK...,

I was at my daughters house Sunday afternoon, sitting in the cool breeze of a Michigan summer, enjoying a perfect day. All eleven of the kids started yelling to me and saying, "Grampa come look at this spider." And low and behold, there it was..., the exact same one as you have. Intimidating fellow at that.

Now Grampa was ready to spring into action, and teach about this particular one..., because I had just looked it up on the Internet and talked to sister Terri about it.

It was almost like it was meant to be. :big_teeth_2:

[tking]

lol...they ARE intimidating, aren't they? I don't care if it's harmless to humans or not, I don't think I want to provoke them...lol. And now, Grampa appears to be the ever-wise one that he is!


I'm still looking for the picture of the other one I mentioned. Sigh...so many years worth of pictures, so little time :-P