What a Tangled Web

I’m not often an early riser, but maybe I should do so more often. What a lovely start to the day. We had a surprisingly chilly 32F summer morning, with frost over ground still wet from a light rain last night.

At 7:00 am, the Alaskan sun was already out and bright, if not adding much in the way of warmth. During Rhonda’s morning walk, the combination of sunshine and frost allowed me a brief glimpse into the secret life of our local eight-legged denisons.

In particular, since I’m almost certain they were the artists showcased here; orb-weaver spiders – known locally as globe spiders.

This is a fairly common spider in Alaska, but I’ve honestly never seen a web of this size before!

Orb-weaver spiders are great bug-eaters and not dangerous to humans, so we mostly adopt a live-and-let-live mentality towards them – as long as they agree to live outdoors. 😉

On the other hand, I hadn’t realized we were quite this outnumbered by our helpful little neighbors.

The average orb-weaver spider is brown or cream/gray, with handsome abdominal marking, but they also come in bright orange, yellow and gun-metal gray (go ahead – look them up). The females are much the larger spider … and they can be pretty large indeed.

I know this for a fact, as I opened a gray metal cabinet out in Jerry’s shop once and nearly killed myself scrambling away from a large globe spider that had been hiding in plain sight on a coiled up orange electric cord. That spider was literally as orange as a traffic cone!

I’ve long thought they must be capable of changing color as camouflage, sort of like an octopus, since I’ve also found a solid gray globe spider on my metal ranch-panel fencing, and once had a yellow-green one crawl out from the underside of a large fall leaf. Word of honor!

In any case, I’ve seldom noticed webs much more than 8-10” across (which I thought were pretty big before today).

This morning’s array of sparkling, dew-laden webs, captured in the sunlight, were a sight to behold. This picture was what first drew my attention. As you can see, it was initially just a glancing sunbeam lighting up a circle in the foliage.

I sure hope I don’t dream of spiders tonight!