ATLANTA (AP) — A large spider native to East Asia has spun its thick, golden web on power lines, porches and vegetable patches all over north Georgia this year — a proliferation that has driven some unnerved homeowners indoors and prompted a flood of anxious social media posts.
Looks friendly. Long as it stays outside. I came home to my place in Glendale, AZ once and found the entire kitchen strung with black widow web and hundreds if not thousands of babies crawling on it. Got several of those pesticide bombs, set em off and went to a motel for the night.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a wee lad my friends and I started our own club called,SKOA. Spider killers of America. We would make a day of it in the woods. Little did I know we were way ahead of our time.
ReplyDeleteI live in Commerce, GA, and I have several HUGE webs with the Joro spiders. They are amazing to watch and how big the can get. How did they get here? Apparently, as they are born they build a sort of kite or balloon type web and let the wind carry them to different places, landing in trees or shrubs or even a house. Their engineering of webs, with one clean strand (for them to walk on) and one sticky strand alternately, then built into a design fascinates me.
ReplyDeleteSomething else we have gotten from the damned Chicoms. We need to rebuild the Iron Curtain, except on the Chicom border.
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I love about Michigan, is that our winters kill most of the nasty beasties, so we don’t get as many invasive bugs ( emerald ash borers excepted)
We literally have only one poisonous snake, and you will never see it, no hurricanes or earthquakes, and not as many tornadoes as some states.
Almost makes the winter acceptable, almost
"no hurricanes"
DeleteThat's cold comfort.
- Crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald
OTOH, Gretchen Witmer.
DeleteBig ass spiders, stink bugs, WuFlu, & kudzu. Gifts from China. What's not to like?
ReplyDeleteDude they're fucking scary as hell. I have to patrol the whole property before cutting grass so I dont get one on my face. Damn near wrecked last time.
ReplyDeleteOne of those damn things built his web across the sliding glass door going out to my back deck. I didn't notice it until I got a face full of web.
ReplyDeleteAfter I killed it, another one built a web extending from the eave of the house across 12 feet of deck to the deck handrail by my gas grill. Thankfully it's starting to get colder so hopefully they will disappear.
Interesting to read it with "illegal aliens" instead of Joro spiders.
ReplyDeleteKenny, surprised you're not seeing them cause I don't think you're that far away. But here in the N Georgia mountains, we've got tons of them. Drive down any subdivision road and look up at the power lines and there's tons of them. Local extension biologists are concerned (yet) cause they seem to pose no danger to native spider population and they're supposedly eating the hell out of our bugs, which is a positive. They're actually pretty up close and my wife and daughter have taken some really pretty close ups of them in the webs. This is one of the few things from China that so far, doesn't seem to be causing problems. Now if you wanna discuss Kudzu. Faggetaboutit.
ReplyDeleteI've seen them here a couple of times, matter of fact I posted pictures I took of one I found in the lillies clustered around our power pole. Great big sucker, about the size of my thumb. Scared the shit out of me.
DeleteThey do provide a service.
DeleteYeah, clearing constipation.
DeleteReminds me of banana spiders in Florida. Man I hated those things.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking about getting back into keeping exotic pets again after seeing that article. I used to keep scorpions, Vietnamese centipedes, and such before I went back to out of town contracting some years back.
ReplyDeleteI just have to get approval from my wife, who may not be totally thrilled with the idea...
Got flamethrower?
ReplyDelete