Yeah, that's creepy.

I haven't been out in the yard taking photos the last few days, and I'm not sure of the reason. Yes, it's been cloudy and wet recently, but today it was clear, cool, and beautiful -- so weather isn't the excuse. I guess I just wasn't in the mood. Unfortunately that leaves me with nothing to talk about in this post... or so I thought. As I went outside to mow the lawn this evening, I noticed this "bug" was still in the same spot that I had seen it earlier in the day, and yesterday too if I remember right.

Since it's right at the edge of the door frame, it's hard to miss, but I didn't really scrutinize it before. Because of the way it was sitting and the way its legs were positioned I thought it might be another assassin bug of some sort, but this evening I took a closer look for the first time. It's not an insect -- it's a spider.

***

I'm sort of a "medium" spider fan. On a spider loving scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is "Quick get a shoe!" and 10 is "This big one climbing on my face is named 'Parker'", I'm probably a 6 or 7. I like observing spiders and photographing the interesting ones, and I want them in my garden, but there are still spiders that can creep me out.

This is one of them. (This photo shows the correct orientation.)


It's not really large -- maybe an inch or inch and a half from leg tip to leg tip -- but it's very spiny. Plus something about the way it just keeps sitting there with its legs folded is just scary.

An hour or so later when I was finished mowing, the spider was moving. Very slowly. I don't know which is worse, spiders that move really fast, or spiders that just mosey along, as if they know they've got nothing to fear. (Sorry about the flash washout, but I couldn't get it dialed down enough):

Actually, it looks even scarier somehow without the flash:

It was pretty dark under the deck now, and I couldn't quite focus. Plus the shutter speed was pretty low, making the photo even more blurry. Just adds to the creepiness I think.

In fact, I'm going to stop talking about the creepy slow spider now.

I'm definitely going to take a lot of cheerful late summer flower photos tomorrow. Gotta cancel out the creepy.