Cool Facts About Spiders!

So I asked the exterminator about the black widow looking spider from my back window. I told him that it looked like a black widow with a red squiggly line down it's back. He told me that it was a male black widow because they have either a red squiggly line or a dot on it's belly instead of an hourglass. I told him how strange that was since there was an egg sac in the window. He told me that it must have been the dad and that he got away from the mom (who usually kills the male after mating), but was coming back to eat the eggs. I feel kind of bad that I had J kill the eggs, since it sounds like the dad had the same goal in mind. The exterminator told me that the males are also venomous. As he was leaving, the exterminator told me to take the broom and sweep down all the spider webs on my front porch because spiders only make enough web in their lifetimes to make one web. They absorb the web (Liz told me that spiders can absorb their webs, but I didn't know they can only make one web in their lifetime) when it gets really yucky, and then use it to make a new one. If their webs are knocked down though, since they can't make anymore webs, they will starve to death.

My Dining Room Window

I don't go outside as much as I should. And I rarely have any reason to go out back. My back door is in my dining room, right next to my dining room window. As I was coming inside from the back today, I noticed all these bugs on the ledge and I thought, "Wow, we must have a serious spider living on the window!"




I ran inside to grab my camera and take a picture of the window sill to show you the carnage. When I came out, I was surprised to find ...

THIS!!!!

It looks like a black widow, but instead of an hourglass, it has a red squiggly stripe down it's belly. I wonder if there's a variety of black widow that looks like this, or if it's a benign garden spider sporting camo?