Return of the “Square Crow” (Scarecrow)

Spooky new residents on our front porch.

I gave in and decided to do just a little bit of decorating for the season. I did not expect any kids to stop by here partially due to the pandemic, but also the kids in the neighborhood have all grown up, so we have only seen maybe four or five groups of kids stop by the last couple years. Then I saw the newest neighbors outside with little kids. Two neighbors across the street. They put pumpkins on the porch, and I thought that was like us when our kids were that little. They need a safe place to stop on Halloween. I am thinking about printing out something to tell where the Trunk or Treats are this year so they will know the best safe places to take the kids.

So…I dug through my shed where I put the bigger stuff from last year. I found a couple of straw brooms and got all the stuff for my scarecrow and started setting him up. I will have to finish stuffing him and find his gloves. I think he could use a straw hat too, but it got dark before I finished. He doesn’t look to bad though, for not being finished. My youngest son got home from work and noticed I had started. He had a couple things to add, but he said to wait on setting them out, because it was supposed to rain. So that was it for today.

Post in the comments if you know what type of spider this is.

My son went to his church where he plays drums. When he came in, he sounded all excited and said, “Mom you gotta see this”. So I went out to see what he had discovered. Low and behold a huge spider had set up resident above our scarecrow. My son wanted pictures, so I grabbed my phone. While we were taking pictures, so we could look it up and see what kind it was, it started chomping on its prey. That was when he decided to get some videos and super close. Hope you are not to squeamish when you see a spider but remember this is just a natural way of pest control. And a funny coincidence since I just started setting out a few of the decorations for the season.

I did some research to find out what kind of spider this is. The best information I could find shows it to be a Brown Widow. A few other sites also daid it was a brown widow, but this is the one that seemed to have the best information. Please post in the comments if you find a better source.

https://bugguide.net/node/view/23403