Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: cat-faced orb weaver

One day in September of 2012, I found a baby orb weaver spider on my front porch. Over the next year, I watched this baby get her first meal, survive a freezing winter, grow to adulthood, find a mate, make an egg sac, and finally, I saw her crawl slowly away under a bush to die. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this beautiful Cat-Faced Orb-Weaver, and I cried my eyes out when she died. Maybe just a spider to most, she was my little friend, and I missed her terribly in the months that followed. In fact, revisiting her pictures now pulls hard on my heart strings. I feel like I should be embarrassed that I feel sad as I look at all the pictures I took. How can a person become attached to a spider? I did though, and I feel pretty darn lucky that I got to know a spider well enough to cry over its death. This is a picture of Roscoe's children, hatching out of the egg sac she made and protected until she was too weak to do so. Seeing all of these kids brings a tear to my eye. I wished that some of them would have stayed around, but they all left after a few days. What a great experience it was to know my friend Roscoe. :) If you'd like to see Rocoe's story in pictures and tales, please visit her album here My Friend Roscoe

After I took pictures of the Pacific Tree Frog, I peeked over to see what Roscoe was up to, and as luck would have it, a beetle had just flown into HER web (yes, he's a she!) and within a minute, she'd wrapped it up and sat with a foot lightly touching it to sense any movement. She will wait for it to die and then have a tasty feast! By the way, she is getting bigger and bigger and eating like a piggy! She eats 3-4 insects every day, maybe more that I haven't seen. I don't know if she's attracted a mate yet but I have been checking every day. She needs all the energy she can get because she needs to grow to her full size and make an egg sac before she dies in a couple of months. :*( I am trying to prepare myself...I know Roscoe is "just" a spider...but she's been here since the beginning of September and I've watched her grow from a itty bitty 1/4" spider, so small I could barely see her, and I kept and eye on her while she hibernated all winter until March. And now...WOW, she's so big and beautiful, and growing bigger every week! She's so cool. It will be so sad when she dies, but if all goes well, she'll have had a whole egg sac of babies and maybe one or two of them will hang around, just like Charlotte's babies!! I hope so...that would be wonderful!

This is Rocoe's moulted exoskeleton! Isn't this fascinating?!!

This morning I took a peek at my darling little spider friend who lives on our porch and noticed that during the night she'd shed her skin! (There is a picture in a note above) This molting is actually called "ecdysis", and is something that happens in many invertebrates. Roscoe continues to grow and although I keep called him a male at first, this spider is most definitely a female, as the males of this species are much smaller. She will continue to grow and is probably sending out pheremones with a hopeful mate to appear sometime soon! Let's cross our fingers, I'm very excited about the upcoming egg sac! :D If you would like to know more about spiders molting, Wiki has a good page about this process here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecdysis

Would you just LOOK at how GORGEOUS Roscoe has become?! As a baby, she was shades of beige and just a bit of orange tones. In the past couple of weeks, a lot of things have been happening...first of all, she's getting bigger and bigger and bigger! Below you'll see a picture of her as a little baby next to a dime. Today she's almost the size of a dime!! And take a look at the coloring!!! Lovely tones of orange, russet and yellow against a background of dove-beige. And wow, she's eating like there's no tomorrow, quickly tying up everything that should be unlucky enough to get caught in her web. Last night I saw two mosquito hawks and a large moth in her web and boy does she zoom all over the place when she's busy with a new victim! Totally amazing to see. It's going to be heartbreaking when she dies sometime this summer...I really love this little lady, but I know she will only live a year. Who knows though...maybe she'll make a big egg sac and I'll get to watch all of her babies hatch and find their way out into the world! It's all very exciting to me and I feel so privileged to have this special spider next to our front door and get to see it grow up and live its life. :) By the way, if I'm correct, Roscoe should eventually grow to the size of a quarter, her abdomen about the size of a dime. She's a Cat-Faced Orb Weaver, and that's how large the other ones I've seen are.

Every day I visit Roscoe several times to see how she's doing. This is the position she's in during the daytime while she rests and waits for nighttime. Her species is nocturnal, so when it gets dark, I will often find her building a web and hanging out in the center of it. She's slowly getting bigger! Did you know that some spiders have a kind of antifreeze in their blood so they don't die from the cold. I was concerned about winter approaching and wondered what will happen when it gets really cold. Apparently, this little girl should have been born in the springtime, but instead, she was probably born in August, so I will keep my fingers crossed that she'll survive!

STORY TIME!!!!! SHE MADE IT!!!!! SHE MADE IT!!!! Roscoe Frank McCrawlerson* has survived her hibernation (brumation) through a freezing winter!! And here she sits triumphantly upon a moth four times her size that she caught, tied up, hoisted up to her spot where she lives, and is guarding, proud and victorious! HOORAY, HOORAY for my little friend!!!! *does a Snoopy Dance all over the room* *I discovered in time that Roscoe was actually a female, but kept her name as it was given. I have changed all gender to reflect that she is a female. I met Roscoe back at the beginning of September when I noticed her tiny 1/4" form in the center of a web she built just next to our front door on our porch! I was instantly smitten by this adorable little spider, and I took lots of pictures of her over the next month or two. However, I began to worry about her because winter was fast approaching. I learned that spiders can survive a freezing winter and will sometimes hibernate without dying. Spiders, like many other creatures (including frogs), have a kind of anti-freeze in their blood and this is how they can stay alive when other animals die. When the temperatures began to dip into the freezing zone, Roscoe stopped making her orb-shaped webs and sat in her little nook with legs pulled in, never moving. But I didn't think she was dead, and I took a peek at her every single day, hoping but with a worry in my heart. I know she's "just" a spider, but I love this little lady and I really wanted her to make it!! The months ticked off... November... December... January... February... and then March came and just when I began to worry that she might possibly be dead, I found her in the middle of a new web she'd made one night a few days ago!! I was so excited!! MY LITTLE BUDDY WAS ALIVE!!!! We had some flightless fruit flies in a jar, and I sprinkled a few in my hand and threw them at the web, hoping at least one would stick. DIRECT HIT!! One of them stuck and Roscoe POUNCED!! YAYYYYY!!!!! Oh how happy I was that she had a snack! Yesterday I tossed more flies in and she got one to eat! YES!! Last night I let the dogs out and took a peek...I saw something twirling near her spot, and I nearly yelled in delight! Roscoe was riding on this moth, which was twisting and twirling from a strong reinforced strand of web that Roscoe fashioned, and she was running all over the moth, which was completely encased in web! Just INCREDIBLE!!! How such a small spider can overpower a large moth and keep it from escaping...it's amazing!! I checked an hour later and she'd reeled in his prize and was sitting just as she is now, waiting for the moth to die before starting in on her magnificent feast! I took some quick pictures but I was hoping she'd still be there at midnight so I could take pictures for my 365 today...and just like a good friend, she waited for me to get my pictures!!! WHAT A PAL!!!! This morning I looked and she'd already released the moth's body from her web, and I found it below, an abandoned husk. I cooed at Roscoe, who was back on her spot, and told her how happy I was that she'd made it through the winter just fine!! I've been smiling all day long! So happy!!! John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.[6] He is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life".[citation needed] He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf. Wkipedia: Jack London