Sunday, July 26, 2009

unwelcome passenger

I can't remember if I posted a picture of this creature or not, but this spider was living on the back of my car, over the rear license plate, for about two months. I didn't have the heart to kick him/her off.

If you don't like nature — spiders, mosquitos, mosquito-munching geckos, and moths the size of your hand — stay away from Oahu. I'll have pics of all those things later. 

6 comments:

  1. i have the same spider here. living outside the window sill. what kind of spider is it?

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  2. LOL

    i guess my spider's name would be.. window spider..

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  3. It does look like it could be a Nephila clavata, or mudang kŏmi (무당거미), which I've seen a few times in older places in Seoul where I've lived, but this one on the car doesn't have as elongated a thorax as the Korean/Japanese species. But on the other side, though, it did have that same strange "freaky mask" look to it (one time it basically flipped to the other side for about a week after rebuilding its web, so I got a good look).

    But the legs weren't quite as long nor were the colors (yellow and black) as clearly separate as they are on the Korean/Japanese variety.

    The other thing, of course, is that the mudang kŏmi is not indigenous to Hawaii, but then again, neither are a lot of things found there, like cats.

    So it could be. I should ask a local (Hawaiian) entomologist to see. If it is a local thing, I'm sure there's some colorful lore that's associated with it.

    It liked on the back of my car for about two months, becoming something of a biology experiment for me. Even the people who did the safety check on my SUV at Jiffy Lube left it alone, after doing a comical double take upon seeing it.

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  4. so it might not be an endangered specie...


    thanks! now i can crush it.

    WORD VERIFICATION: pilat

    translated to my mother tongue it means to flatten. =)

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