We had a visitor last night - a friendly spider.

Last night I went out the front to check the sprinklers, and right outside my front door was this spider sitting in th middle of her web.

This is a Garden Orb-weaving spider, which only comes out at night. During the daytime they hide out in a tree, their camouflage making them very difficult to spot. Every night they come out and build their web, ready to catch small insects flying by.

Before sunrise, they leave their web and hide somewhere for the day, before coming back out the next night and rebuild it.

I decided to get my camera out and see if I could get a few good pictures without getting too close.

Out of about 50 photos, this is probably the best one I got.

I recon she may have even smiled for this one.. here is the above image cropped to give you a closer look. The background is my ceiling just outside on my front porch.

The spider is harmless to humans, so we threw a few moths into the web and watched the spider spring into action. It was quite incredible to watch how the spider caught, killed, and returned to the center of the web before eating its prey.

This morning we went outside and the spider was gone. We looked all over in the garden near the web, but couldn't find it. I hope we see it out again tonight so we can show it to the kids!!