At the time, knowing nothing about spiders I automatically assumed he might dangerous. I called an entomologist friend of mine, Richard who assured me "she" was harmless (I'm one of the few who hadn't read CHARLOTTE'S WEB…yet), and gave me the book BIOLOGY OF SPIDERS by Rainer F. Foelix.

I began feeding her various insects and flies for the reword of seeing the magnificent webs she would create every other night. I observed her in various weather conditions, storms, wind etc… through the end of September when I ignorantly dropped a centipede I found on the ceiling twice her body size on the web thinking it would be a grand meal for her.

Well, the battle was fierce. Eric (the name stuck though she is female) managed to protect her self and then in one sitting, or hanging - ate the whole thing! She crawled up to the top of the chair's head - rest, abandoning her web. She lay suspended with her back facing down for at least a week. I told Richard what I had done where he informed me that the centipede is her enemy with lethal venom of it's own, but he assured me that if she survived the battle she'll be alright. The next day she vanished.

-The guilt and sadness I felt.

The mangled web remained as it was since Eric ate her last, huge but dangerous meal. One day, nearly two weeks later, the remains of the web completely vanished. Two days after that, I found a mooring line attached from the top of the rocking chair where Eric once lay, digesting her last meal. The line ran nearly 7 feet diagonally above the chair to the top of a plant hanging from the ceiling. The line supported a 6 inch round orb web nestled within the leaves. In the center was Eric! (believe me, I know my spider). The other mooring line was attached to the floor. It is beyond me how she attached the line from the hanging plant to exactly, the top of the chair or vice-versa.

Eric remained there, either sleeping under a specific leaf or hanging on her web until Kelly (my girlfriend) insisted on taking the plant indoors since it is a summer plant, as it was now fall.

The next day for some unknown reason the web and all the moorings disappeared, but Eric remained under her leaf apparently sleeping.

Kelly allowed me to bring the plant into her apartment and hang it in one of the windows.

The following day Eric was hanging in a large orb web she constructed within the window frame and the plant. Soon she made the web completely independent from the plant.

As the autumn grew colder flies became more scarce. I managed to find a few small fruit flies, which Kelly called "tic-tacks" and placed them on the web, but they hardly made up for the large flies Eric would get in the summer. At times I spritzed her with a bit of water, which she seemed to like, since the food rations were next to nothing.

She was getting very thin.

A day or two later Kelly called me and said it looked like Eric was dead on the floor but somehow, she or another spider was on the web. I rushed over and found that Eric had molted leaving her skin on the floor.

The temperature out-side was dropping, thus the window area was getting cold. Kelly wanted to put in the storm windows, but hesitated as Eric's web was there.

The next night at 11:00 Eric was attempting to climb on top of the window frame behind the curtain. 10 minutes later Eric was 5 feet into the center of the room hanging a few inches from the ceiling.

At 3 a.m. she was 10 feet away from where she last was, into the living - room (the living room and dining room share the same ceiling). She was 1/2 an inch from the ceiling, diligently trying to do something, I'm not sure what though. I went back to sleep.

At 6:30 I woke up, found she wasn't there. I did a quick search with the flashlight around the living room and dining room.

Almost 20 feet in the opposite direction from where I last saw her, she was hanging from a fully formed orb web in her classic up-side-down stature - just hanging out. The top of the web was anchored along the ceiling, and the bottom was anchored down 3 feet to a quilted wall hanging made by Kelly's great, grand mother forming a triangle with the circular web within. The wall hanging is suspended from a long brick wall lining the side of the apartment in an area that doesn't get much human traffic.

That's what I like about Eric. She always has good taste as to where she puts her webs. Either it is a pretty, antique rocking chair, or an elegant antique quilt.

Eric has kept her web in the same place since October, it is now February.

Near the end of December (about the time Kelly gave me The Book of the Spider A Compendium of Arachno-Facts and Eight Legged Lore a wonderful book by Paul Hillyard, as a Christmas gift), I placed a potted plant standing about 3 feet high under the web to give her some vegetation (after all - she is a garden spider). The next night she modified her web by attaching one of the mooring lines to a leaf. Now her web is over 1 1/2 ft. wide by almost 2 ft. high set within a large rectangle of guidelines.

Every week, twice or three times per week at Richard's advice I feed her a small cricket I find at the local pet store by dropping it on the web. The web started out by being simply a flat plane. Now, after many crickets falling on the web she has modified the web to take on a shallow half-funnel shape at the top and flat and wide at the bottom which seems to allow the crickets to fall easily into the web.

When the cricket lands in the web it remains perfectly still. Eric, having felt the vibrations of the drop through her signal thread, runs over to the web from her hiding place (a 1/2 inch space between the molding and the ceiling), and plucks the web which startles the cricket. As soon as the cricket moves, she rushes down to the web, locates the cricket and tries to grab it. Sometimes it may take 4 or 5 attempts before Eric can actually catch the cricket. In plucking and running, she can often knock off the cricket, leaving her staring into blank space, and me chasing crickets all over the apartment.

Recently, I've noticed a definite change in her hunting technique. Normally she would pluck the web, run down on top of the cricket and often miss it. Now she plucks the web, gets the approximate location of her prey, and runs beneath the cricket, then practically catches just as it falls off the web!

Am I observing a learning curve? Not only has she modified her web to accommodate falling crickets, but she seemed to have adapted her hunting technique, as well.