This is our spider friend, Charlotte. We named her because we are in the middle of reading “Charlotte’s Web” at bedtime these days, and it just seemed appropriate. We watched her take off from her “toddler” spider two weeks ago and move to a spot of her own, leaving her offspring to her previous spot. Today she has a prime corner of the cabana, where breezes are likely to blow yummy morsels her way. Jeff got pictures of her front and back, and she’s just stunning. And, for our family entertainment this afternoon, Dad and I actually killed a fly and put it into her web in the hopes we’d given her some dinner. Unfortunately, it fell out before she ventured toward it. (I know, we’ve taken the concept of back to nature too far!!!!)

And Jeff found a bat resting in our closed umbrella this afternoon. We all came out to watch it and he tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back, so he tried to get a picture of it before the final and successful shooing. I hope it didn’t go too far, because it is welcome to our mosquitos, but we do have two big dogs and didn’t want to chance their getting ahold of it.