My name is Joe Lapp, but kids call me Spider Joe. I'm an arachno-naturalist and nature educator in Austin, Texas, where I specialize in teaching children about spiders. Tarantulas are already popular, so I teach about the everyday spiders we see, like jumping spiders, crab spiders, and orbweavers. This web site is my microblog, where I share my spidering in tweets and images and wax poetic about nature.

Spiders used to be the only animal I didn't like—I would squish them on sight. A series of incidences over several years gradually turned my phobia into fascination. A biologist friend made me hold a jumping spider, a naturalist friend told me cool facts about the spiders we saw as we searched for butterflies, and I had an accidental spider immersion in the woods and came out unscathed. When I finally saw a beautiful Giant Lichen Orbweaver hanging in her web, I was hooked. It's been spiders ever since.

I also author Spider Babble™, a webcomic of itty bitty bug stories. I hope you'll check it out. Before getting into spiders, I studied math and physics in college and lived a life as a software developer. I'm a co-author or co-contributor of several Internet standards, and eventually I'll be releasing some new Internet technologies I've been working on.

I hope you'll hang around and enjoy the spiders!