I just googleimaged “garden spider” to see if I could find an image of the spider my daughter had seen when she was picking some parsley in the garden (she damaged its web accidentally and it charged her) that she then showed my wife and my wife said it looked as if it were eating a bee, it was so big and strange-shaped, but my daughter said no it was just a bee-like spider, long bodied and so on, and then neither one of them wanted to go pick tomatoes for dinner so I did, and accidentally damaged a spiderweb there, on the tomatoes, and by god, a similar spider charged me too (I guess they’re touchy about their webs) and I was all, whoa! damn! because it was the first time I had seen a spider like that, black legs, yellowish body with markings like tribal tattoos, and when I went back into the house and described it to them they were all, yeah, that’s the guy, and I was all, well he wasn’t eating a spider, he was just big, and fast and strange-shaped (at first I thought it was lugging an egg sac around but no, it was just big-bodied) and later that evening when they were discussing whether to sleep out in the yard at night (it’s been hot) and i mentioned the spider for some reason, they were all, “I’m sleeping inside after all” and believe  it or not, it was in the very first images at the top of the page, apparently it’s called a garden spider for real. But the one I saw had blacker legs. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Argiope_aurantia_Yellow_Garden_Spider.jpg

Also, yesterday I woke up covered with spiderwebs, which sort of freaked me out in retrospect, after seeing this spider. But it’s a real pretty spider.