What in the Winder is going on with these crazy spiders appearing everywhere this year? My yard looks like a scene from Arachnophobia. I noticed these wacky webs appearing all around my house in August or September of this year…then I started noticing larger ones all around the neighborhood during my walks. These are not the usual symmetric delicate designs of webs I’m used to seeing in Fall. Instead of well-organized geometric shapes, these new webs are three-dimensional and look more like nests. On every corner of my house, extending from nearly every shrub or tree branch is a giant blob of white sticky strands with a huge 3-4 inch spider poised in the middle, just waiting for me to walk into its web so it can suck all my blood. Some of these webby blobs have more than one spider in them! Gross!
At first I just thought there must be some unusual weather pattern or insect issue around my house that is causing a congregation of excessive spider webs. Then I saw this article about Joro spiders invading north Georgia, which makes perfect sense, because, 2020.
These spiders first appeared in north Georgia several years ago…but clearly they are spreading rapidly. After all, they are referred to as “invasive,” and researchers have found that they utilize a “ballooning” technique to spin a web into the air, catching a wind current, which enables them to travel 50-100 miles before landing in a new spot to nest. (!!!) This is the first year I’ve ever noticed them taking over my yard here in Old Town Winder, even though they first landed in Hall County or somewhere further north in the state of Georgia. Another article states that their webs are so large and strong, they can capture hummingbirds in them! UGH.
Anyway, it looks like they are here to stay – they are not deadly to humans but it doesn’t seem like it would be fun to get bitten by one, so I am going to keep my distance. Please excuse the poor quality of photos I included here – I didn’t want to get too close or disturb their web! You can see the leaves and debris suspended in their web too… Meanwhile, watch where you walk in Winder! They seem to be everywhere…
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They are all around my house to. Look up in power lines you will see them one after a other. I spray them and kill them. I have seen a spider that is usually here in Georgia at all.
They were around my house too they have very thick webs I pulled them up not a garden spider you normally see found out they are very bad for us to have around so I just sprayed them with bug spray and took my broom to get the webs down it was like hard pulling getting those webs down