Wolf …
You can just see a glistening under those huge mouth parts where this one is sucking on crushed breakfast.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
That’s probably why she didn’t run when I opened the door, he was enjoying the days first meal.
And what you’ve eaten needs to be digested, and it takes time and attention, to the sensation of things.
It’s instinctive, they don’t think about it, just feeling the physical need to sit and digest, as long as there’s no danger.
Cause some disturbance in proximity to a digesting spider and she will respond, if only with a raising of the forearms.
More often with a relocation, always ready to take flight. A rapid departure is signature, but depends on conditions.
As with all things, context is important. Express no kind of threat and spider will sit content to be spider sitting.
Demonstrate some form of aggression and you risk the same in return. Or she’ll just disappear in the blink of an eye, literally.
Spider … of another kind.
I opened the door to the garden and there it was, just outside the threshold looking in.
I don’t think the wolf spider is particularly dangerous to people but I can understand why people fear them, and fear spiders in general.
Having seen so many of their kind in action, hunting is primarily what spiders are known for, so fast and deadly, their prey usually end in a massive toxic shock.
Not this time however, there was no prey in sight, I was not it. Though it did appear to be waiting to come in the house, and raised its front legs in defense when I sought to move it from danger.
It was that close to the door and being crushed by it closing. Out of the way on the upturned sole of a shoe was another matter. He, or she, sat a while as I sought a few angles to do the subject visual justice.
Nature, in all its forms, inside and out, is not always an easy encounter for us who are so removed from it by our civilized ways of being.
But as with most things, a little practice of being in the sense of things helps with the difficulty of being in the mind of things.
The sense of a thing, it’s actual characteristics, has no psychological component.
Unless we then attribute such by thinking about it.
Thought and sense, different modes of being.
And then there is another sense …
… of something simply good.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
Beautiful pictures, thank you! I read a book on several different varieties of spiders and their habits growing up, and I’ve found them to be fascinating creatures ever since. So thanks for the great photos.
Thanks Mike. It’s a pleasure tracking spiders at times, often finding the same tiny creature patrolling the same place day after day.
And they have their sense of being, where they are, doing what they do. It’s in the face, where the eyes are, a sense of focus with no emotion.
:o This was just chilling outside your door?! I’d have screamed and ran and made the situation worse. I think I prefer to admire these bits of nature from your photos of them. It seems to me that you capture a bit of their personality in your shots.
Apparently they are common around here, in the sub-tropical old bush forest.
I try to represent what I see, the amazing nature we live in, as honestly as I can – without prejudice. And the ‘rules’ of composition help with that.
Thanks Ze …
Quite the little model for you Mark. Lovely captures, wolf because of the fangs?
Yes, thanks Karen. Wolf maybe because they range about hunting prey, and such big fangs to make the most of opportunities. Unlike most other spiders we know of, the web weavers.
Wow, Mark, these images are intense. The details are incredible and fascinating. Is it called a Wolf Spider because it is hairy? Terrific work!
Not sure why, but I think it’s because they don’t sit in a web waiting for prey, but are out and about hunting, like wolves do – though not in packs, thank … for that.
It might also have something to do with how they respond to the appearance of attack, they raise up the front legs that is suggestive of aggression, but is probably just normal defense in an open ranging creature. The ‘webbers’ usually run and hide. They could have just as likely been named dingo or lion spiders, I think.
Thanks Jane.
That’s what I read in a book several decades ago. And lots of online sources share that speculation.
“A Wolf spider is a member of the group of spiders whose scientific name is the Lycosidae. Lycos means “wolf” in Latin. These spiders get their name from the way they hunt, which the people who named them thought was like the way wolves hunt. However, wolves hunt in packs but spiders are solitary animals.”
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_spider
It makes sense, doesn’t it …
Fabulous!
Glad you like ’em. It’s a proud little thing.