This Spider Crawling a Frozen Maine Pond is Absolutely Terrifying

I always think it's weird when things associated with summer, show up in winter.

As much as it usually seems Mother Nature kind of hates Maine, things happen every now and then that just defy the odds. Like how we can have a 70+ degree day in February. Or when you start having to pull ticks off your pets in the middle of winter. It's always a little weird, and makes me wonder what causes all these anomalies.

But one thing you definitely never expect to see outside in winter, is spiders. I might even be less surprised if I saw one inside, but even those are few and far between. But what if you were hanging outside on a cold winter's day, maybe ice fishing... And you notice a small spider, completely alive and crawling at you? Would you freak out?

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This very thing just happened on a pond in Cape Elizabeth.

Karl Ramsdell, who posts a ton of amazing photos and videos on social media, caught this tiny arachnid coming at him across the ice on Great Pond in Cape Elizabeth, and posted it on the Maine Wildlife page on Facebook. He also claims it's not the first one he's seen this year. This time, he captured a fantastic video of this little bugger shuffling about. Check it out...

Karl said this one was relatively small, about the size of his pinky nail. But still... a spider in winter?!

This isn't as uncommon as you'd think.

According to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, fishing spiders, also called dock spiders, aren't all that hard to find. In fact, generally speaking, nothing really severe happens to spiders in winter. If they reach a certain level of cold, they go dormant. If it warms up a bit, they go right back to business.

And as big as these suckers can get, if you saw one coming at you on the ice, you may think it was truly the end of days. But it's just some harmless critter also looking for a winter food score. So really, you and the spider are the same. You're friends. You both just wanna do a little fishing and be left alone. Except I don't scare the crap out of people when I fish...

There are a ton of creepy crawlies out there. Just stay in your seasonal lane. But check out these creepiest of crawlies...