Eight legged pets

I am not too crazy about Halloween anymore, but I have always been captivated by the spider, a creature that becomes more prominent in late October and whose threatening caricatures decorate many a Halloween activity. But the real spider is an amazing little animal, spinning beautiful webs and then scurrying around them. My favorite is the writing spider and her progeny that grace my perennial lantana near the mailbox like an old friend who comes to visit each summer. And this morning when I let my dog out, there was a huge classic web, beautifully strung in the corner near my back door with some sort of brown spider near the center who seemed to be startled by my unexpected appearance. Boo backatcha! I will respectfully leave it alone however as spiders are obviously intelligent enough to respond to my curiosity. I say let Mother Nature handle it. Soon the web will get stringy, the spider will abandon it, and it will go away on its own. Later today however, when dark has just settled in, I may pull out my new Canon SD 1000 and snap a picture for my spider photo collection. Reader beware!