On to more interesting things. Hope the spider pictured here didn't scare you. She's harmless. She's a golden garden spider. I mention her because we have one hanging beside our pool attached to the little bit of fencing that is around the pool. Every day Addy and I look over the side at the spider to see how she's doing. Two days ago she had a big brown grasshopper tied up in silk on her web. I swear she looks bigger today now after having ate that.

The most interesting thing about her, I think, is that zigzag line she puts right in the middle of her web. It's called stabilimenta. Spiders that use stailimenta catch 34% fewer insects but this particular spider likes to use it anyway. Guess it doesn't hurt her if she can catch such a big grasshopper like she did the other day. She sits in the center of the web all day long with her eyes aiming down and her abdomen up. She holds her legs together in pairs and it looks like she's got four legs instead of eight.

Now the neat part that I discovered today is that when she gets disturbed she vibrates her web. I touched the edge of her web and all of a sudden the web vibrated like crazy. I didn't think I had touched it all that hard. After observing her for a few minutes, the vibrating didn't stop and I had to conclude that the spider was doing it. Ten minutes later, she and the web were still moving. I learned after using Google that she vibrates the web to make her appear larger and more threatening. If that doesn't frighten away the intruder, she drops to the ground and hides. I thought that was pretty cool to witness and to learn about. 'Fraid I won't show Addy that. Addy would keep trying to disturb the spider and the poor arachnid would never get any rest.

We've had thirteen days straight with temperatures over 90 degrees F so far. Two more days and we'll tie the record for the longest heat wave ever.