"happy face" spiders in NC?

[Irontom]

While staying at a friends beach house in Wilmington a few years ago we seen a fairly large spider web near the front door in some trees.  The occupant was lime green with a smiling face on its rear portion.  What looks to be this same spider is painted on the sides of some U-haul trucks.

Just recently a co-worker that also helps out at a local park reported seeing one.  This would be in the sandhills region of NC.  After looking around on the internet it appears the "happy face" spider is only located in Hawaii?  Are the ones my friend and I spotted hitchhikers or a different species, maybe escaped pets?  Googling smiley face spiders only brings up a spiny spider, and happy face spider only pulls hits for the endangered spider in Hawaii...

[jblake]

hey there. any way u could get you're coworker to get a pic. to put on this website? i've lived in the southport area all my life and spiders are one of my fav. little ones. i can tell you i've never seen a large lime green spider in a large web. our orchard spider makes a large web but is small and has many colors, green included, and the lynx spider is green but is a roamer. i've never seen what u r describing. i'm very intreastd!

[Irontom]

I think it may have been an orchard spider I had seen, and most likely what my co-worker had run across as well.  The orchard spider pics here; http://fieldandswamp.com/orchard_spiders.htm are similar to the happy face spider from Hawaii seen here; http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/happyface_03

At least with the haze of time they are similar to someone that doesn't know much about spiders to start with    Thanks for helping me out with the ID, sorry I don't really have news of a rare species....

[Will Cook]

Glad you got it figured out! You can definitely see a smiley face on the underside of an Orchard Spider if you look with a creative mind.