I went for a hike today — perhaps not the best choice, because a lot of people have the day off due to corona virus, and a lot of people have the day off due to Independence Day tomorrow. By the time I arrived at the trail head at 7:45, the parking lot was full. It was like rush hour with people, bicycles and dogs going up and down the trail. I’m glad that people are enjoying the outdoors in this stressful time, but there were lots of us on the trail.

But everybody was polite, and happy to be outside. We all huffed and puffed our way up the trail, pulling our masks up to cover our faces, even though we were outside. It was good to be on the trail.

As always, I had my trusty camera along, and found a number of interesting thing to photograph. One of the things I found was a beautiful spider’s web, with the spider sitting outside the entrance to the den. Very cool.

Trigger Warning: If you don’t like spiders, you may want to just skip the rest of the blog post, because the photos may be a little creepy.

While I was getting my camera out, I realized that the spider was right in the entrance to it’s lair.

I looked through my viewfinder, and realized that the spider was moving like lightning to the outer portion of the web. There was a wasp caught in it!

The spider ran out and tapped the wasp. But the wasp’s stinger is point towards the spider.

The wasp was able to avoid getting caught by the spider, but was still tangled in the web.

The spider danced around the wasp faster than the camera could catch the images. I assume that, although the wasp was snagged in the web, it could still sting the spider.

The spider lunged for the wasp as the wasp finally makes its escape.

The spider was left with nothing.

And so it went back to waiting patiently at the opening of it’s den.