Spider! But First, "Full-Service Shop?"

     Warning: if you can't stand spiders, you need to skip this one.  Right now.  Do not scroll down; do not pass Go, and do not collect fifty thousand scary-looking spiderlings who will scamper through your dreams each night, trailing gossamer strings of web, barking quietly and biting you if you so much as twitch.

     First, I digress: this building has been slowly growing just north of Kessler Boulevard and College Avenue* and recently sprouted a sign:

They'll also walk dogs.  And change your oil.  Maybe.

     A closer check of other signage along the fence reveals the bank-with-lunch is only the first floor and they're looking for a tenant for the second floor.  I was thinking maybe a day spa/machine shop combo.

      That was for the anti-spiderers, for the people whose reaction is the exact mirror of the poor hairy wolf-spider whose funnel-shaped web I carelessly damaged one side of with a weed-eater last week -- the poor thing didn't know whether to sound Battle Stations, General Quarters or Collision Alarm, and raced crazily from one side of her web to the other a few times, finally settling at the neck of the funnel and bouncing indignantly as I directed the weed-whacker elsewhere.  I said, "Sorry, lady, I thought you'd moved out," but it didn't help.  She kept bouncing.

     Nope, don't look farther if you can't cope with spiders.
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     Okay, are they gone?  Here's a new creature who has set up shop near the patio, not a tiny little airship spider seining gnats with fairy webs that vanish in strong light, nor a big old wolf spider hoping for a small mouse but a real builder, with a web that spans six feet from anchor to anchor.  Here's one of my better attempts to show the working part, with both spider and lunch in evidence:

Spider at left, just above center, lunch (and possibly decoy) to the right and lower.

     The spider itself -- probably herself, as those male spiders that don't get eaten after the wedding tend to be travelling fellows and who could blame them? -- the spider herself could probably sit comfortably on my little fingernail were it not for the way I would be yelling, "Get it off me!" and shaking my hand.  But what a shape!

Maybe I saw this on the Late Movie and not in a nature book.

     I've seen a picture of a spider like this (though I can't remember where) and it may be a cousin of the little spiders that have encamped in the back yard.  It's patterned, too, and tries to look more like debris than a spider when it's just waiting for prey.

     Update: Probably a Spined Micrathena Spider. Some of these photos are very close.
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* By their titles, you are to be given to understand that these are Streets To Be Reckoned With, not to mention Navigated By, and Thoroughfares Of Standing indeed.  I believe Avenues are outranked by Boulevards, which in turn are subordinate to Parkways -- and Parkways answer only to the Almighty.  Or the Street Department, which is almost the same thing when it comes to roads.