Forcing An Image To Display Before Loading Other Images?

I've recently implemented this really cool jQuery preloader called queryLoader [URL]. When a visitor comes to my site they are fed all the important images for the entire site (it's a very small site). During that time queryLoader [URL] shows a percentage loading animation, and once all the images are loaded it wipes the screen & displays the website.

I've placed another custom animation in the "page loading" div, and i want to make sure it loads first so that it is displayed while the rest of the images get downloaded. I've tried pre-loading with javascript as the very first script in my header, before jQuery or queryLoader get loaded, like this:


<script type="text/javascript">
pic1= new Image(250,300);
pic1.src="images/page_loading.gif";
</script>

[Code]....

However, this doesn't seem to be that effective. When i clear browser cache and reload the page, the page_loading.gif sometimes doesn't appear until the site is almost completely loaded. Is there a more effective way to assure the page_loading.gif gets loaded before any other images?

My site is [URL]