Baby spiders, slug porn, and other household wildlife.

There is a big beautiful orb weaver who lives in the window above the utility sink in the garage.  She is ancient, for a spider.  I first noticed her in the summer of 2009, right after we first moved in to the house.  She built this beautiful web in the window, which took up the whole window.  A very nice "typical" spider web, an evenly spaced spiral across a network of support threads.  You can't really see the web, but here she is. I wish I could find a better old picture.  I might have to check the wife's computer.:

This picture was taken in June of 2010.

Here she is in March 2011:

 Hiding up in the corner.

She looks like a bulldog here.

Anyway, there are several more spiders that live in the window.  I love them.  I have never seen any other bugs in the garage.  Why?  Because of the spiders, of course.  They are fat and happy in their window.  One in particular got fatter and happier, and laid/spun/whatever an egg sack, which hatched last week.  The rate of attrition amongst the babies was pretty high.  I think some got eaten by their siblings, but I could be wrong.  There are still a bunch of the little gals, though.

The ones with legs sticking out are spiders.  Everything else is just old dead bugs left in the web.  I don't know what kind of spiders they are.  They have this messy web in the corner behind the hand-towel.  But they stay off the towel, so I leave them alone.  Mostly.

While we are on the whole wildlife theme, here's a salamander that was hanging out on the front step one evening.  I saw it when I came home from work.  It was after a big rain, and it was just chilling.

Arboreal Salamander

Aneides Lubugris

And what post on wildlife would be complete without slugporn?  

Yes, that's right, slugporn.

Here are two randy banana slugs (In Butano State Park)

Those lumpy things sticking out of the right side of either head are slug penises.   Yes, slugs, the original dick-heads.  They are hemaphrodites, so both are packing a package, if you know what I mean.  They curl up around each other

In the pic below you can see the vagina (also located on the head) of the upper left slug opening up, with the lower slug about to do his business. Don't confuse the vagina for the breathing hole (properly called a pneumostome) on the back.

And consummation.  Was it good for you?

 Soon they will crawl away and each will lay a little clutch of eggs in some damp spot of the forest floor.

UPDATE:
The big Mama spider found a husband, and has started making her own egg sack.  He's much smaller (sexual dimorphism is HUGE in orb weavers) but she's letting him stay on the web and she's now laying some eggs.  And while this is beautiful, it's also sad, because after she spends all that energy making eggs and watching her babies, she will crawl to a dark little corner and die.  How's that for bittersweet?

 You can see dad on the upper right here.
He's much smaller but still looks like an orb weaver.

She looks like she's eating her own egg sack