OK, so she isn’t actually a pet, she just lives in my back yard. And she didn’t just lay one egg; she laid hundreds. She is a black and yellow Argiope, an orb-weaver spider. Orb-weavers are found all over the world, and in the eastern United States the black and yellow argiope is the most common. It is probably safe to say that most people have seen these spiders and their big intricate webs, and may even have one perched outside their door. Most of us are familiar with Charlotte, the wisdom-dispensing spider in the childrens book "Charlotte’s Web". She was an orb-weaver.

A lot of people are afraid of spiders and that is a shame. They serve a useful purpose in nature and most of them are harmless to humans and won’t bother you if you leave them alone. The orb-weaver is big, leggy and may look scary, but she will not bother you and will run up her web and hide if you get too close.

The web itself is a work of art, with long support strands going out from the center and attaching to plants and walls. Circular rings of sticky webbing radiate out from the center creating a large net to trap unsuspecting insects that fly into it. When the web is complete the spider perches in the center, always head down, and waits. When the unfortunate bug flies into the web and gets stuck, she pounces on it and wraps it in webbing, forming a cocoon. She may eat it then or set it aside for later.

If you see an orb-weaver it is almost certainly a female. Males are around, but they are much smaller than the females and generally stay out of sight. When a female spider wants to mate she will attract a male and wait for one to come by. Unfortunately for the male, after mating he often becomes the female spider’s next meal.

After mating the female produces hundreds of eggs while still tending to her web. Every day her body gets bigger and bigger until she is huge. When the time is right she will build an egg sack out of web material and deposit her eggs into it. She will then place it where it will be safe until spring, when her children will start the cycle over again. Sometimes the female will produce one egg sack and then die, others may produce a second and even a third batch of eggs before dying. In any case, her cycle is almost over; she will be gone by the first frost.

Which brings us back to where we started.

Some orb-weavers spin a web at night and take it down in the morning, building a new one each night. Not mine. She was there 24/7, rain or shine. One morning this week I took the dogs out and she was gone. The web was a shambles and she was nowhere to be found. She had been there the night before when I took the dogs out before bed. A few hours later we went out again and she was back with a brand new web and hanging in her usual spot. The difference was that she was about a third the size she was the night before. Somewhere out there was a sack full of eggs.

Another orb-weaver had built a nest near hers awhile back, a much smaller spider, and I wondered if she would run it off, but she never did. She didn’t seem to care. This morning that spider was gone, leaving the web intact. I suspect that the other spider was a male, waiting his turn to mate. Apparently after depositing her first batch of eggs she was ready to go again, and he got his chance. My guess is that he won’t be needing that web any more.