What is it?

Wanna play a game? Look closely. What do you see? Give up? Allow me to zoom out a bit...







Curious?


You should be.



HERE. Click on the photo to enlarge it if you dare. Jon, Andrew and I witnessed this two nights ago in the Applebee's parking lot (Grandma was at home watching little man). A couple of folks were bent over, oohing and aahing and our curiosity got the better of us so we went over to them. They said this spider was running erratically all around then suddenly "exploded" (aka gave birth; I can relate) and stopped moving altogether. The sad (or happy, depending upon your take on 8-leggers) fact is that once most spider mamas give birth, they just lie there and die. That's what this girl was doing. We were strangely saddened about this, on top of being totally grossed out, of course. Jon was like,
"Get in the car QUICK! They are everywhere!"
I agreed.
If I had been brave enough to get near her, I would have put my hand in the pic for scale; with her legs sprawled out, she was as big as my palm... NOT KIDDING.
And as long as we are discussing spiders, we have a lot of these 50-cent-piece-sized garden orb weavers building in the doorways of our house. It's such a refreshing morning when you leave the house and run smack-dab into one of their webs, lemme tell you. Both Jon and I scream like sissy girls when it happens (sorry Jon, but we do), which is weekly (I am not exaggerating). 'Tis the season for spideys, I guess.
I hope my blog friends will still talk to me after this gross post. It was just too wild not to share.