I live in Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay. This spider spun a huge web across my entire driveway, and was SO orange. This morning, I went out and of course the spider was gone, but so was the web. My guess is that it's an orb weaver of some sort, but I can't lock down an ID.
This is an Aranea Spider and is an orb weaver. It is in the genus Araneus of family Araneidae. It quite likely is Araneus diadematus, and it spins a web up to 20 inches across at night. They eat their web each morning which is why it was gone when you checked for it the next day.
Although this is indeed an orb-weaving spider, I would be very hesitant to pin a specific i.d. on it without seeing at least one good image of its dorsal (upper) side. Not only are there a few species of Araneus that can have quite similar markings, a couple in the genus Neoscona also can superficially resemble them.
Here's a picture of the top. Not super great, because it started to move and I did not want to disturb it anymore. Eats its web....that's interesting; I have never heard of that. Thank you so much for the information!!
Unfortunately, this image is too unclear to see any details that might allow a more specific identification. You might try looking at the image gallery at http://tinyurl.com/phrpzj to see if you can find anything that comes close.
