August 31, 2007
Wanna see my nightmare?
I've tried to think of something profound to say about this -- other than, "Holy crap!" -- but words fail this arachnophobe.
WILLS POINT, Tex., Aug. 29 — Most spiders are solitary creatures. So the discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists, and park visitors.
Sheets of web have encased several mature oak trees and are thick enough in places to block out the sun along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, near this town about 50 miles east of Dallas.
The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk. The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds.
Allen Dean, a spider expert at Texas A&M University, has seen a lot of webs, but even he described this one as “rather spooky, kind of like Halloween.”
Mr. Dean and several other scientists said they had never seen a web of this size outside of the tropics, where the relatively few species of “social” spiders that build communal webs are most active.
Aye, carumba! This one's good for weeks of nightmares.
Holy crap!
UPDATE
Thanks to andrewdb, who left a comment with this link. And don't miss out on this one, either.
Posted by Mike Lief at August 31, 2007 10:00 PM
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Comments
I fear few things, except spiders. The little buggers make my skin crawl. I wouldn't go within a mile of that park without a flame thrower.
Posted by: Ritz at September 1, 2007 07:15 AM
A friend returned from deployment and said even the Special Forces guys scream like little girls when the Camel Spiders show up in their tents.
See here.
Posted by: andrewdb at September 1, 2007 09:01 AM
Now we know why you only went out with blondes.
Posted by: the little coach at September 3, 2007 02:37 PM