A couple of years ago, a naturalist friend of mine recommended that, if I wanted to learn the spiders—definitely a big gap in my database— the best book was Richard A. Bradley's Common Spiders of North America, which was published by the University of California Press. Normally, I would ask for a review copy in exchange for featuring it in my weekly column, but the book was too old, by UCP policy, for review... and it was strangely priced on Amazon: the cost wasn't fixed and varied between $35 and $80, depending on when you looked. But last holiday season, my son Noah tracked down a used one that was being dumped by the Lubbock Public Library and I was happily in the spider ID business. Now, it's a rare day... or night... during which I'm not finding something arachnological to identify. This little charming, found on a much cooler morning trek around the grounds, is an Emerald Jumping Spider, more formally known as Paraphidippus aurantius. I'm not exactly sure what kind of caterpillar she's eating. That calls for a different book.