This post is not about a children’s book.

The other day the crew was sitting at the breakfast table before school and Speedracer started hollering about a spider outside.

“Ewwww. There’s a spiDer on the porch!” (He’s been reminded about the “d” so much it’s a whole new syllable for him now.)

Now, spiders are allowed on the porch. Mostly. High up in the corners. I mean, it’s the country. I try to be fair.

But then I looked out the window.

This was not there the night before. We definitely would have noticed it.

It was one of those big black and yellow garden spiders that usually puts their web up in the evening and is gone by 9-10 am. They’re harmless, although they’re big and kinda scary looking. Kinda cool looking too though. We have lots of pictures of them.

But this one was right, smack in the middle of our porch.

And she wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

The Ladybug and I both grabbed our cameras and headed out to investigate.

Now that was definitely not there the night before when I let the dog out. That’s the gate that closes our porch stairs so that Penny has to stay out in the yard if we want to eat on the porch or anything. (And so that she doesn’t scratch the door to come in! That’s the most difficult habit to train out!) Believe me, I would have noticed that before I touched it!

She was still working when we saw her. Still putting on the final touches.

The Cowboy, of course, immediately launched into all the details of a spider’s egg sack and hundreds of spider babies hatching out everywhere and pretty much sealed the fate of this little family of arachnids.

My this-is-the-country tolerance is pretty low for the porch anyway, since I consider it part of our living space. If you want to co-habitat on our porch, you’d best be out of reach of the broom. Sharing picnic space with hundreds of baby spiders, however harmless, is not in my plan for this Fall.

She didn't seem the least disturbed by us nosing around. (Ok, Penny "nosed," the rest of us used a zoom lens.)

The kids were busy telling me all the bug-eating benefits we were going to get from hundreds of baby spiders hatching out on our porch and living in our yard and dangling over our heads just like in Charlotte’s Web…

So I waited until lunchtime…

Then I swept her and her precious egg sack triumph into the yard.

It's amazing how she's so big and scary looking and harmless and Black Widows are only 1/5 that size and so dangerous.

The kids were pretty disappointed, but the boys hunted for the egg sack in the yard and couldn’t find it so they decided that she must have hauled it off somewhere more safe.

I decided not to say a word about Penny’s suspicious looking, crunchy snack earlier.