> I found a very interesting spider yesterday on my kitchen floor and am hoping someone can identify it for me. Either that or point me to a website with a spider encyclopedia or something.
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> At first I thought he was a tiny origami creation made out of very grainy grey-white paper. Then I noticed he had 8 appendages. Ordinarily, I am terrified of spiders, but he was so interesting that I had to stare.
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> I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and I didn't think too many interesting spiders lived around here. I don't know if he was actually that dusty gray-white color or if he perhaps fell into a pile of dust from some plaster. His body was the weird part. I got down on the ground to see how far he came off the floor, and he still looked like a folded piece of paper--very flat, but from the top all spread out. He was about 1.5 cm long and about 1 cm wide (legs included, which were rather thick and short). He almost looked like a giant tick in shape. Does anyone know anything about spiders? I'd like to know what kind he was. Thanks!
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> Naomi

I don't think we have any like that around here, but since we live in the East Tennessee woods, we get a variety of spiders. On a cool, damp, September morning like this you can see their webs everywhere. They particularly like to string a web from the rain gutter to the hand rail around the deck. If I wait until the dew is gone to water the flowers on the deck, I wind up walking through a lot of webs. Most are built by fat, short legged, brick red critters about the size of a quarter.

We also have big writing spiders in the garden and daddy long legs (aka harvestman) on the front porch and carport.

Down here in our basment den, we get those big harmless fuzzy brown monsters as big as silver dollars. I see a few every year, usually in the fall. They like to rest on the wall, but I see them marching across the floor sometimes. I don't really like them in the house, but I figure they probably eat bugs, and we get a few woodland insects inside from time to time. I've seen about three black widows here in the 32 years since we moved in. They must be strays, because that doesn't seem like enough to maintain a population.

One small green spider that we have all summer long will bite and cause a place somewhat like a mosquito bite. The have a bad habit of showing up on outdoor furniture.

I saw a dusty gray spider in the garage once, but it wasn't very big, so I didn't pay much attention to it.

I guess I haven't been any help, but as you can see, it doesn't take much to get me going.
Howard