This is the most frightening spider statistic ever: spiders walk across our faces as we sleep!

[woodsprite]

30. Charlotte's Web was always my favorite book when I was growing up.

The one I almost ran into last night was what I call a "Charlotte" - light brown and darker brown with stripy legs. We live in the woods and see tons of wolf spiders and grass spiders, but it's not often we see a large orb weaver. Boy, did she make a large shadow on our ceiling! I've seen the garden orb weavers (pretty black and yellow) but the ones I've seen around our house have been tiny (1/4" to 1/2" body). There was a huge one (body about 1.5" long) happily captive inside a large light fixture by our church. It was awesome, my family would just sit there and watch her wrap up her latest conquest. I guess meals would fly into the fixture attracted by the light and get trapped, then as they were bouncing around trying to get out, they would be caught in her web.

The oddest spider I've ever seen was what I called a "spikey butt spider" when I was a kid (over 40 yrs ago). Now that we're in the woods, I see quite a few of them. Always in the same spot -- building webs between my hosta plants.

Oh, and my daughter was out with the dog one night and got really excited because she saw (and photographed) a trap door spider in our front yard. I didn't even think we had those in Delaware, but a Google search proved me wrong.