Spider

Weekly while Things 1 and 2 are playing chess, Thing 3 and I read to one another in the library. She noticed the first week that directly behind our chair, just outside the window, was a spider.

These aren't new to me and I've seen bigger, but we did make a discovery last time. When I was a kid we called these garter spiders or writing spiders, and we pretended we knew it was just nonsense when other kids teased that if they wrote your name in the web, you would soon die. Thing 1 (ever the biologist) confirmed for me that it is properly called an "Orb Weaver." I did not really question the "orb" part of the name. Thing 3 and I went outside the library for a better look though, and soon discovered...

Yeah the "orbs" are egg sacs. Our neighborly arachnid is about to hatch thousands of eight-legged horror demons onto the window. Those are nearly the size of ping-pong balls.

Hoping not to see our names written in that garter, and watching her do that vibrate-y keep-the-heck-away thing, we left off.

Thing 3 plucked a dead bluejay while I snapped these but dang if I got pix or video of that.