“I’d never seen anything like it before …
Wendy Gardiner had stepped outside her home in Queensland, Australia, to check on her native beehive when she felt something hit her head. She thought it was a leaf. But then, the object in question fell from her head into a nearby potted plant.
She looked down to see something strange, orange and alive. Gardiner counted eight legs and realized it was a spider, but it didn’t look like any spider she recognized.
“I’ve been looking at spiders for many, many years,” Gardiner told The Dodo. “But I’d never seen anything like it before.”
Gardiner, who is originally from England, thought the spider looked a little like a Cornish pasty, a traditional British food. To her delight, she even noticed a crown-like design on the spider’s back.
“It looked like a pastry that had been cooked for the king!” Gardiner said.
Still, she couldn’t identify the unique spider, so Gardiner took some photos and posted them on a Facebook group with a plea for help.
She quickly got her answer. It was a four-spined jewel spider (Gasteracantha quadrispinosa), a colorful arachnid only found in two places in the world — Queensland and New Guinea.
“People were very intrigued by it because of the interesting markings on the back,” Gardiner said.
Out in her backyard, Gardiner watched the spider for as long as she could.
“It was actually spinning a new web because I’d disturbed his web,” she said.
Eventually, she went back into the house, and when she returned outside, the spider was missing.
While Gardiner has yet to come across another crowned arachnid in the months following, she’s keeping an eye out anytime she steps out to tend to her bees.
“I hope that I see more,” she said.