This is, I'm told by my entomologist friend, a nursery web spider. It's big, and is guarding that egg sac fiercely.
Nikon D90, 105mm macro
(click to embiggen!)
Nikon D90, 105mm macro
I just want it to get the hell off my back door and go away.
Gulp.
Is it poisonous?
nope. but it is aggressive, and can jump. and it’s huge.
saw a huge black widow on the side of the house, last weekend.
A Black Widow? A deadly Black Widow? Gulp. If one of those bites you how long do you have?
yep. big ol nasty black widow. they’re not typically fatal, though they can make you sick for a couple of days. could kill a cat, though.
we found a bunch of them in the bushes in front of our last house: https://ok-cleek.com/blogs/5929/better-her-than-me/
a brown recluse is worse: their venom can cause the tissue around the bite to die, leaving you with a big-ass hole where you used to have flesh which can take weeks or months to scar over. guy i used to work with got bit by one and he has a 1″ diameter divot in his arm, years later. luckily, they are rare in NC.
See, this is why people live in places like Montana. Most creepy crawlies are too smart to live here.
no creepy crawlies?!
we’ll be out there (Jackson, WY) next month. i’ll bring some spiders!
Well, not NO crawlies. We do have our share of intrepid species that can handle a hard freeze. Like hobo spiders. And of course, mosquitos.
But I grew up in Albuquerque, where you were likely to reach for the bathroom light switch in the dark and put your hand on a cockroach. Where you had to shake your shoes before putting them on to make sure there were no scorpions in them. Compared to that, MT seems positively barren.