Black Widow Spider of Stainless Steel

Denver, North Carolina

A neighborhood exterminator company named Innovative Pest Management wanted a big bug to draw attention to its roadside location, but not a "cartoon" bug. So it hired a local race car designer-turned-sculptor, Dave Simpson, and he created a nightmare-big (but properly scaled) black widow spider of gleaming stainless steel. He perched the arachnid, with its eight-foot-long crab monster legs and bulbous behind, on a granite boulder, which was then placed on the business's front lawn in 2010. The pest and its rock weigh a combined three tons, with detail so fine that you can see the spider's hideous little hairs.