I found this beauty earlier today as I was pulling out some supplies for my class. It's a wolf spider (i'm pretty sure it is...) but I couldn't be specific about what species of wolf spider (there are about 125 different wolf spider species in North America alone.)
The wolf spider does not build a web to trap its prey. Instead it hunts at night - rather like a wolf. They tend to be solitary spiders -unlike wolves- often found, as this one was, near doors and windows.
Their bite, while painful, is not likely to be fatal.
Trevor brought a beauty of a specimen in the house in a small jar one day. A few hours later, I asked if he had remembered to set the thing free. It turns out he had, in the house, by twisting the cap off "to allow the spider to get air to breathe." I slept uneasily for weeks.
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