Yellow Garden Spider

There are currently about a 1000 of these suckers all over my fence. If it looks big, it is even bigger in person. It is bigger than the palm of my hand.

It looks like one of the golden orbweavers - really beautiful spider. Thanks for sharing.

We have so many at the land that they hitchhike on my truck back to the house 17 miles and are all over my garden.

They say everything is bigger in Texas, but this is taking it a little too far, don't you think! Ha! Ha! Beautiful spider! Okay for out on a fence, not too sure about the house. I used to have an orb spider set up under a grapefruit tree - didn't worry me, except I kept getting my hair in its web when gardening, forgetting it was there.

Many many moons ago I lived in florida. We rode my horses thru a grove and you could see these huge webs in the trees with yellow and black spiders much bigger than my hand in the webs. We called them banana spiders. I really am creeped out on spiders.... give me a snake anyday...
Well most times they were nice and high in the trees and we could duck, but this one time I hit one in my face, I was riding bareback and was off that horse so fast and slapping at every part of my body. Some how I hung onto the reins and she swung around. I was dancing all over the place and of course that spider had taken off somewhere. Others almost fell off there horses laughing at me.... Just a very old memory.

I had the same thing happen running through the woods. It was on my back and no one would knock it off because it was too big and scary. We just sat there for 20 minutes until my brother hit it with a towel and we ran.

When I was in the first grade, people still used many an outhouse.Walked in to one and lo and behold, A giant wolf spider 9 inches around.,came running around the bowl.
Needless to say the next visit to my grandparents,whose farm was still using the outhouse system,we had a slight problem convincing me from then on to go that way.!!!

My Great Grandparents had a raised chamber pot in the basement and when my Grandmother went to visit them the first time, she tried to use it in the dark. The next day, they tried to find out who went to the bathroom in the ice cream maker.

Your spider is not a Golden Orb-weaver, it is the Black and Yellow Argiope - Argiope aurantia, also known as the Writing Spider, Yellow Garden Spider or Yellow Garden Orbweaver
http://bugguide.net/node/view/548315/bgimage
http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showimage/5154/

Ken

We have none of those spiders this year so far.
However, we have about 5000 very very large wolf spiders.
It seems to change every year.

I used to love having these in my garden in Maine. I once brought one inside the house - inside my shirt. I did calmly remove the clothing and rescue the spider and put her back outside but it did freak me out a little bit later on :)