Mystery Solved!

Argiope Aurantia!

If anyone remembers the crazy picture I put up of the mystery item I found in my house-bound Croton, I finally have an answer for you! This beautiful black and yellow garden spider is what layed that fabulous egg sack. I got a hold of one of the Entomology professors at the Ohio State University. He took a look at my pictures and immediately recognized it as the egg case of the common black and yellow garden spider, Argiope Aurantia. I was really excited when he told me this. That’s what I was hoping it was.

I was also really glad I didn’t bring it inside.

These spiders are harmless, even if they bite. The females are the brightly colored of the two sexes, with the male looking similar in shape, but being much smaller, and a drab brown. The females get pretty big. I found one walking around in my garden a few weeks ago. The one I saw was almost two inches across, with her legs out as she walked. She was beautiful, with black and yellow striped legs, and a yellow spotted black abdomen. The cephalothorax (the front body section, with the eyes, mouth and legs attached to it), is white.

These spiders build a web every morning, and every night they tear it down and eat it! It’s thought that they get nutrients from the web. When you see those beautiful webs with a spiral design on them, it’s an argiope aurantia web. They like to make zigzag designs in their webs, which has earned them the nickname “writing spiders”. Maybe these zigzags stabilize their web, or possibly make them more visible to birds so they don’t fly through and ruin them.

I’m glad to have a backyard that is able to support a healthy habitat for different species. I took the egg sack out of the plant VERY CAREFULLY. I didn’t want to tear it. For several reasons. I actually had to use a knife to cut through the silk because it was so strong I couldn’t tear it. The “Bug Doc” as he’s known, told me that if steel and spider’s silk were spun into a strand of the same thickness, the spider’s silk would be stronger!

I put the sack in a dish of cotton balls and put it out in the garage. It’s a drafty, detached garage that just serves as a garden shed. if you ask me, it’s a good place to house helpful spiders. If the sack hatches, and the spiders populate my yard, I might not have such a bad mosquito problem next year.