Our Science Lesson for the Day: Spiders

As I opened the door to the basement to switch out the laundry, Pax came running around the corner and asked me if he could come downstairs with me. I knew there were two reasons he wanted to come downstairs. Pax is not a fan of staying upstairs alone and he loves to search for spiders when I am working downstairs.

After I switched the laundry out and started to head back up the stairs, Pax got all excited and yelled, "I caught one, I caught one." Urgh, those dreaded words. I turned towards him and gave him the speech I always give when he finds a bug, "You can observe the spider for a few minutes but then we are setting him free outside."

"Okay, I promise." He smiled at me and we went to the office to research our latest catch.

This is what we discovered and the materials we used:

Remember this book? I am so grateful this book happened to be a part of my Grandpa's library because boy is it coming to good use. 

 Before opening our spider book to see if we could find the type, we used the magnifying glass to take a closer look. 

I couldn't get a clear resolution picture of the spider but you can see what it sort of looks like. Pax determined that this spider was a type of crab spider. After looking in our book and examining all of the crab spiders, we found one we think it looks very similar to.

To dig a little deeper, we also compared pictures on the internet and found a really cool website that brought up tons of pictures of this particular crab spider. What do you all think? I am pretty sure we found our match. This one is a female, hence the stripes and coloring. 

Here is the website we used:

http://www.eurospiders.com/Xysticus_cristatus.htm

And I am pleased to say that after all of our careful research, this spider remained unharmed and is now free to roam our front yard. Paxton kept up his end of the bargain and set her free. Proud mama.