spider

Sophia loved holding the tarantula so much last year when we were in Denver for a dollhouse show that we decided we had to visit again this year. The only problem was that her hands were too cold and the spider wouldn't stay with her. While I was holding it, the lady handler informed me that tarantulas aren't spiders, which was news to me, and Wikipedia, and the spider book in their gift shop. I decided it just wasn't worth the argument. The rest of the Denver Butterfly Pavilion was wonderful though, it has the largest and most beautiful variety of butterflies I've ever seen.

Spiders just shouldn't get this big (at least in Montana). We found her in our sun-room, the web covered the entire corner of the room (I'd say it was about five and a half feet, top to bottom). I can't even label this a macro photo because she's way bigger than the camera sensor (photographing something smaller than the sensor is what usually defines a macro--at least with SLRs). It is difficult to get a sense of scale in the pic, but she was roughly the size of a large jaw breaker. btw--I call it a she because the big mean looking spiders are usually the females. (I'm stopping there...