Spider in Turtle Shell

I was lucky yesterday to have a pleasant visit with a cute Jumping Spider.  I’m not sure of the species, but I believe it’s some type of Phidippus.  Members of that genus have to be the friendliest and cutest of all the spiders.

The remains of a turtle shell are what first caught my eye.  I was checking to see if there was any physical evidence to the cause of the turtle’s death.  It’s always sad to see that a turtle has died.  I just hope that there are enough young turtles coming along to act as replacements.

I found the spider hiding beneath the shell.  This is certainly a dry and relatively safe place to seek shelter.  I felt kind of bad about treating its home so rudely. 

The spider wouldn’t stay still and kept running to the back side of the shell.  I was busy trying to rotate the shell with one hand and operate the camera with the other.  The spider’s colors were a very close match to those of the turtle shell.  A fast approaching thunder storm was encouraging me to get back to the house, so I shooed the spider back to the underside of the shell and replaced it as it had been.

The scutes were still laying around, so I pieced them back onto the skeleton.  There’s enough of the pattern left that I may be able to match it to one of my box turtle mug shots if I happened to take its picture while it was alive.