For the Love of Spiders

My brother rearranged the basement a week or so ago to make room for exercise equipment. He's been eating well for a while, but wanted to get back into exercising. Okay.

So I went down into the basement with my laundry a couple of days ago, to be greeted by a new friend. I'm so glad this spider built his (her?) fancy web out of the line of traffic.

Spiders don't bother me as long as, well, they don't bother me. Stay on your pretty little web, catch your flies and bugs, but keep me out of it. Especially ones this big!

Hard to tell from the picture, but the spider is about an inch long, including legs. The web is maybe 8x10 inches. Still, the usual spiders in this nearly 60 yr old house are of the cobweb variety (yanno, small and nearly invisible).

Of course, this spider is going to have to relocate outside. The web has been here for a few days now, but there are no insects in the basement to be caught. Now that I think about it, I wonder if he (she?) came in on the carpets that hung outside all summer...