Creepy Crawlies

Now I'll admit I'm not a fan of bugs, especially bugs that would take up the whole palm of your hand. But I have to admit these guys are pretty neat. My friend Karen, gave me a praying mantis egg case back in the spring and I put it in my garden. It was brown and about the size of a ping pong ball. I never saw anything come out of it and I kind of forgot about it. But then last week a new brown ping pong shaped thing appeared in the top of one of our bushes about 3 feet away from where I put the first egg case. Then we started looking around. Soon we found a praying mantis...



and other...


and another...


There was actually a forth green one but I couldn't get a good shot of it.

The reason we even found all of this was because of another creepy crawly living in the garden. We have had this spectacular spider in our garden for the past few weeks making a huge web. I actually saw it from about 40 feet away as I was pulling my car into the driveway. Sadly the web was gone this morning but he/he? was sitting on the house and finally in a convenient spot so I could snap a photo of her too. I wish I was braver and put my hand next to it so you can see how big it is. Including the legs it's about 2 1/2-3" long.