Really nice shots of the spider with a very clear view of the hourglass and everything. One of my earliest blog posts was of a black widow spider eating a praying mantis on my back porch, so I can appreciate how difficult it is to get a good shot of one of these and how close you need to get. With something suspended in the air like this it's challenging sometimes getting it to focus properly. I had to turn off the auto focus and do mine manually to get something close to good. Everything I've ever read about praying mantis is that they actually hunt and eat black widows, so I called the post "fallen hero" since he obviously perished while trying to eat one. When I lived in San Diego I used to sort of keep other spiders and insects like the mantis that eat spiders as pets, then kill all the black widows that I saw. Just killing them won't keep them away for long. You have to cultivate competitors in that ecological niche which will keep them away long term. I actually watched a daddy long legs eat a house spider once, so I left those alone inside as well. Never had much of a problem with widows or house spiders after I started doing that.
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