It's a love-hate thing

Spiders are such amazing creatures. Scary as all get out, but amazing. Especially when they're big. Big spiders are so amazing, in fact, that they deserve to be photographed and shared with all the world. Here's a black widow that was living in our garden hose last summer.



Cool, huh? (It died, tragically, shortly after these pictures were taken. Who'd have thought its last moments would be so immortalized?....)

So when there was the carcass of a largish spider on our carpet this morning, the first thing I did was grab my camera. I spent several minutes trying to get a decent picture of it in focus.




I thought maybe the pictures were too dark, so I took one with a flash:


Then, if that wasn't enough to freak me out, as I was adjusting the camera to get the spider in focus, what do you think it did? IT MOVED.

I jumped up so quickly that the cats were freaked out for the next 10 minutes.

What happened to the spider? Oh, it died, tragically.