Spider, Man

Just a head's up: if spiders are not your thing, you may want to click away!

Maybe go check out this awesome Spider-Man spider cosplay.

Now that that's out of the way, on to our story.

I was driving to get take out the other night and noticed out of the corner of my eye something moving on the hood of the car. At first I thought...well, I don't know what I thought, maybe it was dirt or something? I came to a stop light and it was moving again. It was a spider but not one I'd seen before.

Naturally, when I got to my destination I had to take some pics since he'd managed to hang on for the ride. Here he is on the windshield wiper arm to give you an idea of size. It's really only about as big as my thumbnail but that's certainly bigger than the usual spiders I see around the house.

I tossed a pic up on Insta (that's how the cool kids say it, right?) and one of my friends ID'd it as a jumping spider. With that knowledge I was able to figure out it's a Bold Jumper. I've seen smaller jumping spiders before but they've looked quite different.

In retrospect, I should have known it was a jumping spider because there's two things I always notice about them. Unlike other spiders, when they move they always look like a stop motion special effect. There's just something stilted about their movement. The other thing is they seem to have great eyesight.

When I was leaning in to take these pics, I could clearly tell he was looking back at the big brick in the sky (my phone). You can see in the above pics, he was even cocking his head to the side. If he was wearing a tiny top hat, I imagine he'd tip it to me to say "Hello up there".

How's that for a close-up? Kinda feels like he's going to jump right at you!

He managed to hang on for the drive home as well so he's probably out and about hunting in my yard.