I used to teach spiders in October in my classroom...and the students loved the unit. I had this spider in my yard one year and watched it grow from a baby to full grown. The zigzag on the web became smaller and thinner, the older the spider got. One day I blew a bug into its web, and was amazed at how fast it pounced on it and wrapped it up in silk...about two seconds! Finally it made a huge egg sac that was the size of a ping pong ball. It was a brown color and looked like an upside down balloon. It was on the siding of our house and was there for awhile. Then one day i noticed that it had deflated...all the babies were gone.