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.
