Weaving Larger Webs

For some reason, the yard of the house I've lived most of my life in has had what seems to be an explosion in its spider population. I've seen more spiders out in the open than I think I've ever seen in my life this last summer.

And they aren't little spiders, either-they're big ones.

You can't tell exactly (haven't exactly got a great camera), but this is a pretty good-sized spider for Northern Ohio. My fairly large fingers for comparison:

What you really can't tell is that it's strung this web, which is about two feet wide and at least that tall, between a pair of bird feeders. Bird feeders which have not seen much bird traffic lately.

(Granted, it's probably more because the feeders haven't been getting filled-it's not like this spider is big enough to catch even a pretty small bird, unlike some from Australia and South America...)

In fact, it's getting hard to walk around the property at night. There's a small orchard where some spiders have built webs larger than this one at night, big enough one almost gets the impression they're trying to catch themselves some human-sized prey. (Those of us that walk around out at night now take other paths.)

I haven't made up a single word of any of this.

-Signing off.