This is a preserved female wolf spider that was given to me by another grandson. He found it lurking in his basement bedroom where he dispatched it with an insect spray. Unfortunately, he was under the belief that if a little spray is good then a lot must be much better. I suspect the poor thing died by drowning.

She was in terrible shape and it took quite an effort to clean and restore her. She now resides in a pill bottle with mothballs for over a year now.

I staged this session by placing her on a piece of a broken tree limb using a Laowa 60mm f/2.8 1X-2X Ultra Macro lens mounted on the Fujifilm X-T20 mirrorless camera. I chose the aperture of f/8 for this session with a magnification of 2X. All other aspects of the session were consistent with others that I stage and post here. There were 179 images taken in the stack and processed in Zerene Stacker to produce the final image posted.

Wolf spiders are solitary animals that typically roam alone in the night, stalking prey. It's fun to go out with a flashlight and find those glowing eyes in the dark. They spend most of their time on the ground, but they can climb trees or other objects if they need to. They can be found along the banks of streams, gravel, and low vegetation as they hunt for ground-dwelling insects. Wolf spiders sometimes find their way into houses, usually in basements, crawl spaces, breezeways, etc.

They are essentially harmless, although they have been known to bite when threatened. Although it may not be fun being bitten, the venom is harmless to humans.