On 8-legged neighbors: a digression

The Pacific northwest is a pretty spidery place. We don't really have a mosquito problem, or a lot of other "buggy" issues that seem to plague the rest of the country (at least here in the city, anyway), so we're lucky there. But we have got SPIDERS. Lots of 'em. Which I guess probably is related. But I digress. Around this time every year, these spiders are suddenly ginormous. Like, ridiculous big momma spiders. Prior to living out here, I had a firm conviction that the biggest spiders could be found in Harrisburg - my office was on the 10th floor, and even up there they'd have these whoppers (on the outside of the windows, thankfully). There were urban myths that these spiders were some sort of mutant, a descendant of the spider victims of the Three Mile Island disaster, as TMI isn't that far from Harrisburg. Whether this was true, I don't know, but my first season in Portland trumped all those spiders. I've mostly gotten used to it now, but every so often we have these whoppers a little too close for comfort. This morning, I went out to water my plants (we've had something like .02 inches of rain over the past 53 days or so), and stopped dead in the doorway - the spiders, the big hosses, are here - and they're setting up shop in my bamboo, which a) needs watering and b) is awfully close to my door. This is bad on so many levels. One of them is hanging out on a web that spans both, so it's just chilling in midair and you can't see the web if you don't look carefully. CREEPY. 

This one is currently MIA - the web is still there, though. This was yesterday, from the other side of the plant. [UPDATE: it's back - it wasn't there when I was out watering, but has since returned.] It's worth noting that these are not your little bamboo branch - they're a good 6' high with a decently wide span. Hard to dodge and very thirsty. 

I consider myself pretty comfortable with the outdoors and the life therein...but spiders, man...I saw Arachnophobia at an inappropriately young and impressionable age, and I think I'm still scarred.