It is a golden orb spider. It is essentially harmless to folks (unless terrified of spiders) they just eat a lot of bugs. If you tap them in the middle of their back they put on a display. They move their legs up and down to "pump" the web back and forth like a trampoline. I'm told that this is to make themselves look macho and scare off whatever it was that was touching them. I have donle it a number of times and it always works, sometimes real well. Always elicits a response from the folks who are afraid of spiders.

Pat