Subject: Pumpkin Spider? McLean, Virginia
Location: On our McLean, Virginia home
November 1, 2013 10:57 pm
Dear Bugman,
We live 6 miles from the White House in McLean, VA. Rain and wind the day after Halloween toppled one of the grim reapers standing guard outside our front door, revealing the perfect holiday decoration ever: a big bright orange spider, touched with black here and there carrying what looked to be a large orange sac on its back!!!
After attaching a note to our house forbidding anyone to disturb our spider, I photographed the new arrival and continued with my post-Halloween errands. A few hours later, the spider’s sac was covered in some sort of fuzzy material. The spider ’s legs were barely visible under its body.
Fast forward to early evening and the fuzzy sac was no longer attached to the body of the spider, who remained close by possibly spinning a web.
Is our new housemate a pumpkin spider? Enquiring minds want to know!
Signature: Brook
Hi Brook,
Because of your thoughtfulness to provide a note forbidding anyone from disturbing your Pumpkin Spider, we are tagging your post with the Bug Humanitarian Award. We have a slightly different interpretation of your photos. Your first image is of a female spider about to lay eggs and her body is swollen. In the second image, the one we are posting, she has produced an egg sac and she is guarding it. She will soon die and the egg sac will overwinter, hatching into several hundred spiderlings in the spring.
