Meet Charlotte.

WARNING: If spiders in any form freak you out, you may want to to look away. But, just so you know, they freak me out too. The only reason I was brave enough to take the picture was all the glass between me and the spider.

Charlotte built a web on the outside of my office building several months ago.

Just a minute...

I want to give you time to adjust to what you will be seeing, so just go with it.

As you can see, she has created her egg sack. Which, combined with the weather changes, means she isn't long for this world. The first time I noticed her all I saw was a small black dot in the middle of a huge and very intricate web. Every time I passed the window, I would tell myself that I needed to get a picture of the web if nothing else.

Over the months, Charlotte got bigger and bigger. I became impressed with her intelligence. Her web placement is perfect. It is located outside a second floor window in a corner of our building. The light glinting off the window attracts insects, but because she is in a corner of the building and up so high she has no need to worry about predators. Most of the office managers in the building have noticed her and they began calling her Charlotte- like the story- a month or so ago.

Of course, I thought I was the only person to see her from the beginning- but that's just what happens when no one else is around when a person finds something cool.

Yesterday Charlotte was three times the size you see here. So, she must have created that huge egg sack sometime last night or early this morning. Now, I know spiders are creepy. I think the only reason any of us have taken an interest in this particular spider is because she is separated from us by the double-paned completely sealed glass windows of our building. So, after seeing her egg sack many of us expressed our sadness that she won't be there for very much longer.

We got so used to following her slightest movements and noticing when she had caught something or had made a change in her web. Now, we all know she's going to die soon and it is a little sad. As we stood around marveling at the size of the egg sack we must have drawn quite a bit of attention to ourselves. Students who had been in the building constantly were only noticing her for the first time. Many of them were pulling out cell phones to take a picture of her. Others were shuddering at how creepy she looks.

But, those of us who worked there could only comment on how weird it would be when she was gone. There is no real point to this post. I kept meaning to take a picture of her to show my husband and I always forgot the camera.

Today I finally remembered to bring the camera to work with me. And seeing an egg sack that wasn't there yesterday makes me so glad that I remembered.