STOP, spiders! and Earthquake (added later in the day!)

This morning I drove my daughters to school, and one of them said there was a gigantic spider on the stop sign we had just passed that they had seen from the bus the day before. She said it was the biggest spider she had ever seen. So, being a compulsively curious arachnophobe (bad combo), I turned the car around.

It was big... no, it was gargantuan! (Funny how "gargantuan" sounds like "tarantula") We almost got the car stuck in the web. Really.

Even after a 5.9 earthquake (unbelievable...thought it was the overloaded washer, at first) the spider was still chillin' in her wispy looking abode, with her gigantic egg sac hanging nearby, safe in her view, unlike my own offspring who seemed a world away during the quake of 2011.