Ahhh, haaa haaaa. You guys had me laughing all the way through this thread

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Hg, to a point, I kinda don't like spiders either, but sometimes it's hard for me to just squish one, b/c I kinda respect them (although it's easy for me to smash a black widow or brown recluse that's around living quarters for safety reasons). Around where I live, every once in a while you'll see those yellow and black garden spiders. I had one in my back yard waaay in the back that had an awesome, very neat/symmetrical web. The spider was the biggest of these type I have ever seen. Lenght of body was about 2 inches long, very pretty, but intimidating spider. I would just sit there and watch it for up to 30 minutes one time. Once, I spent about 10 minutes cathcing a grasshopper and threw it in the web, DUde, that spider was no joke, it wrapped up the grasshopper quick. Truly amazing thing to witness.
Yesterday, I saw a spider that I have NEVER in my life b4 seen. It was very pretty. I had to pick it up on the end of the broom and look at it--very pretty! Body was about 3/4" long. It was a bright grass green color and had a very "friendly" type of abdomen, not big and round like a black widow but kinda pointed. It had little hairs on its legs. Actually, they were more like spines. Kinda made me think that if I touched them, it would hurt--those kind of "spines" that you'd see on cactus. Its whole body was that bright grass green color. Anyway, after I stared in awe at it for about 5 minutes, I gently put it back in the tall grass. I'd like to know what kind of spider that was.....
All in all, though, I can't say I really LIKE spiders, especially like black widows and brown recluses, I usually stomp them. But you know also, if a nature show comes on TV about spiders BAM! I'm there staring at the TV sucking in all the info, it's quite fascinating, really. We don't have many scorpions around here, at least I ain't never seen any. But I'd LOVE to see the fighting power of a scorpion-- one in action. That'd be cool to see a scorpion fight against a spider, I could definately see it win all the time too like previously mentioned, but few to none insects are any match for the mighty PRAYING MANTIS, boy those things are AWESOME! Especially the way that they can move their heads to turn and look at you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love 'em!