The Webs of Death approach. Repent! Repent! Via The Associated Press:
Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park.
Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won’t go anywhere near it.
“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”
Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.
Read it all at the above link. Great, as Dave in Texas put it at Ace:
Entomologists (bug scientists) scratch their collective heads over how it came to be. “Were they collectivists, building a giant web for the common good”?
That’s it. Commie spiders in Texas.
Burn it up. Burn it all up. Or better yet, nuke it from orbit.
Overreacting, you say? Then – explain THIS, if you dare, from News.com Australia:
A GERMAN man who lived with over 200 black widow spiders was fatally bitten by one and then eaten by his other pet creepy-crawlies.
Police found Mark Voegel, 30, in his apartment partially eaten by his pet spiders, several snakes, lizards and thousands of termites, Sun.co.uk reported.
Neighbours called police after becoming worried about the smell coming from Voegel’s apartment.
Police were met by an unforgettably gruesome scene.
“It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa,” a police spokesman said.
“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.
“There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.
“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”
You see? You see? He tried to reach out to befriend the little buggers and . . . It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face… and it has been eaten off! . . .