The creepy crawly thread.....

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

No Andy, actually it's a toad.

 

[mikewint]

ABW, I don't think so, the skin appears too smooth to be a toad. Looks like good old Rana pipens the Leopard frog

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

I stand corrected! You are correct Mike. Sorry about that Andy.

 

[Crimea_River]

Strike 2!

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

This ignorance thing is becoming embarrassing.

 

[Wayne Little]

just keep taking good pics Aaron!

 

[RabidAlien]

Amen to that! Heck, Aaron, I'd've called it a frog too.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Nice shot Aaron.

----------------

This lil one built a web in front of my house.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

A Garden spider!!!!! Very cool David! Some folks call them Zipper spider because of the design in the web.

 

[Crimea_River]

Nice!

 

[mikewint]

Temp has been dropping mid-60s in the morning. finally got one of the suckers to hold still for me to snap a pic: a five-line blue-tailed skink

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

WHOA!!!! Very cool Mike!!!! I'd love to get a shot of one of those!

 

[mikewint]

Been trying all summer but they are FAST. There is a nest of them under the deck stairway. little ones about an inch long are all over the lower concrete patio. This one was out in the AM catching some rays

 

[GrauGeist]

Sweet pic of that spider, VB!!

And that Skink, I sure love their color of blue...nice shot, Mike!

 

[RabidAlien]

Great shots, both!!! I'd encourage them...both of em eat bugs. I love seeing fat, happy geckos, skinks, garter snakes, and spiders around my house. Dunno if they're related, but we used to call those huge spiders with the zig-zaggy web "banana spiders" when my family was stationed on Guam. Dunno where the name came from, that's just what the kids would call em.

ETA: VB, try getting a spray bottle with clean water (rinse the bottle to make sure there's no soap or cleaning stuff in it), and gently mist the web. Try spritzing upwind of the web, and let the finer particles drift into the web. Play around with angles, you can get some phenomenal shots with the sun reflecting off the water droplets captured in the web, and if the spider is cooperative, you'll have beauty and the beast. 'Course, a fat grasshopper or moth as payment for the unexpected shower wouldn't be amiss....

 

[GrauGeist]

Good advice, RA...

A suggestion: determine which way the breeze is coming from and "fog" the mist into the web...otherwise, droplets hitting the spider may make it tense up or move out of the web for cover.

 

[Gnomey]

Nice shots guys!

 

[mikewint]

Beginning to re-think this move south. Noticed a lot of movement in the grass of the back yard. Closer inspection revealed a whole herd of these hairy critters (7 or 8, I headed indoors) neighbors responded to my emptying of several clips from my M-16 into the yard!! "Oh, their just tarantulas, it's mating season, wait a few more weeks the yard will be full of them." I'm not phobic about spiders but its been a long time since a herd of spiders, 5 - 6 inches long, crawled across my patio.

The Arkansas Chocolate Tarantula

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Those are cool Mike!!!

 

[Gnomey]

Cool shot Mike!