Ms. Garden Spider

I really enjoyed Texas because of the diversity of arachnids that live there. For an arachnophobe, it's probably a nightmare. For me, it was a photography adventure. 

My first summer there, this beautiful specimen set up her web outside our living room window. In a lot of ways she became a sort of "pet" to our family, and every morning we'd look out to see how she was doing and if she had caught any food. They're a well known species to this hemisphere and include a trademark zigzag pattern in their orb webs as some sort of mechanism to attract prey. Their species is called Argiope aurantia, but most people call them the black and yellow garden spider. They're harmless to humans and make great predators against insect pests in your yard. 

Later that year she was briefly joined by a male in her web and soon produced an eggsack. We never saw her young, no doubt set off into the wide world to continue serving humanity against pests. Inevitably she passed away as fall turned to winter. Though her spot outside the living room window was never filled by others of her kind, we always remembered that summer Ms. Garden Spider came to live with us.