How Would You Like To Run Into This?

Here you can see the female (center) with two males at the top of the web. They are small. Wonder what happens to them after mating....dinner maybe?

Weird photography where I centered the spider on Callie's nose!

Same on Micah.

Wrong picture...sorry! Out of focus, but these are the same female and two males from above.

A wasp or beetle in her web for scale. She was HUGE!

Antlers for additional scale. These spiders were everywhere at my Aunt's pond a couple of years ago and they grow big...well at least the females do!

The Golden Orb Weavers build large, semi-permanent orb webs. The strong silk has a golden sheen. These spiders remain in their webs day and night and gain some protection from bird attack by the presence of a 'barrier network' of threads on one or both sides of the orb web. Sometimes their strong webs manage to trap small birds or bats, and the spider will wrap them and feed upon them. Commoner prey items include flies, beetles, locusts, wood moths and cicadas. Golden Silk Orb Weavers are large spiders (body 2-4 cm) with silvery-grey to plum coloured bodies and brown-black, often yellow banded legs. The males are tiny (5 mm) and red-brown to brown in colour. This spider belongs to the Tetragnathidae (longjawed orbweavers) family.Nephila clavipes is the only species in the Nephila genus that exists in the USA.