The dogs and I have seen several interesting things in the road over the last few days. We saw snakes a few days ago, a newt on Sunday and a turtle on Tuesday. But the most interesting thing we saw on Tuesday was a black widow spider.

You don’t really need to see the red hourglass to recognize a black widow. If it looks like it’s been spun out of shiny black glass, it’s a good bet it’s a black widow.

This one was in the road, apparently dead. It looks like it’s missing some legs. The red markings are not the well-known hourglass, because that’s on the under side. These red markings are on the upper side.

But here’s the cool thing. I leaned down to take a photo with my phone. It turned out pretty well, I thought. And then I enlarged the image.

You can see the reflection of the sky and even me in the abdomen. It’s like a black, spherical mirror. Black widow spiders may be dangerous, but they are beautiful in a sinister sort of way.