Stunned woman captures viral moments of garden spider killing, sucking blood of bat outside home

POTEET, Texas - A stunned Texas woman captured moments of a garden spider about the size of her palm killing and sucking the blood of a bat that was trapped in its web on Wednesday. 

Annette Alaniz Guajardo, of Poteet, Texas, never anticipated for her photos to go viral. 

She said she “freaked out” when she saw the spider and bat just before work on Wednesday morning.

“I was just pulling out and I said, ‘no way, what the...?’” she recalled. “So I got down off my Jeep and I started taking pictures.”

“I went back inside and said ‘come here, you need to see this!’” Guajardo told her husband. 

Her husband “freaked out too,” then told her to just leave it alone and “let nature take its course.” 

The spider mounted on the bat’s back and it looked like it was sucking its blood, she said. 

When Guajardo got back from work Wednesday afternoon, the bat looked dry, “like a prune,” and “it was dead.“ 

Then, when she got back from work on Thursday afternoon, the bat wasn’t there anymore, but the garden spider, which she also calls a “banana spider,” was still there.  

Guajardo said she’s never seen a bat at her house before and never witnessed anything like that. 

“I don’t know where that bat came from, or where it was heading,” she said. “Because I know the night before in San Antonio, I know the bats fly under the bridge... so maybe it got lost.” 

She said she doesn’t know whether the spider is a male or female, but determined that it’s her “Spider-Woman.”

“It’s not my Spider-Man, it’s my ”Spider-Woman,“ Guajardo said. 

When asked if she planned to name the spider, she chuckled and said she “wanted to.” 

“I am going to name her Zoe,” she said. 

But if it turns out to be a male, “I’m going to name him Peter.”

This story was reported from Los Angeles.