Quote: At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland. 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.
In case you missed the news in August officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas found a truly enormous spider web that completely engulfed multiple trees and shrubs and which, in it’s entirely, covered about 200 yards of trail. Entomologists were in a tizzy because this sort of thing is exceedingly rare. The Tetragnathidae spiders native to the area are cannibalistic and solitary but this mega-web was evidently built cooperatively, by over 12 different types, to take advantage of unusually good feeding conditions brought on by heavy rains in the early summer. Now at the end of summer its being reported that the web is laden with egg sacs… Wow. Spider cooperation? Is this evolution in action? Would another good feeding season lead to a continuation of spider city? New behavioral patterns continuing on? Lets hope not because you just know what it would ultimately lead to...
Only recently has my fascination with spiders (because they are marvelous machines) managed to barely eclipse my complete (irrational) fear of them. So I was enjoying this and clicking the links and being generally fascinated and amused.
Until the last image.
On the bright side, it give me the perfect excuse to drink myself to sleep tonight in an effort to render myself so thoroughly unconscious that I don’t revisit that image during my slumber.