Millions of spiders have infested homes in Memphis, Tennessee, and created a web that stretches for about half a mile. This must be the ultimate nightmare for people who suffer from arachnophobia – an extreme or irrational fear of spiders.
Memphis homeowners said they stood helpless as scores of spiders invaded their properties.
Local residents said the giant web looked like frost, or perhaps morning due, covering the lawns across the road from several homes.
Neighbors Frances Ward, Debra Lewis and Ida Morris told WMC Action News 5 that local efforts to get rid of the spiders are slow-moving.
A giant web covered grass and roads for half-a-mile.
Ms. Morris said:
“I’ve seen about 20 on my porch just in the last day. (Local authorities should) clean this area up and spray for these spiders and make it safe. There are kids running around. A spider could bite the kids or anything.”
Ms. Lewis said the infestation is making it very hard for people to live in their homes. “You can’t even sit in her house because they’re all on the wall, on the door. We been killing spiders for about an hour now,” Ms.Lewis said regarding a friend’s home.
A case of unnoticed spiders
Experts insist the presence of spiders, even in such large numbers, is not anything the local residents need to worry about.
Steve Reichling, a Memphis Zoo curator, said:
“It’s a mass dispersal of the millions of tiny spiders that have always been in that field, unnoticed till now. It could be juveniles – millions – in a big emergence event, or adults of a tiny species – probably a sheetweb spider – leaving for some reason possibly knowable only to them.”
If they are Sheetweb spiers, like Mr. Reichling believes, they are not dangerous.
“In fields and meadows, there are often literally millions of spiders doing their thing, unseen and unappreciated by us. I would not want to live in a world where such things were no longer possible. The presence of these spiders tells us that all is well with nature at that location.”
Locals say Mr. Reichling’s reassurance sounds fine, until you find that they are all over your home.
Video – Millions of spiders make giant web
Memphis residents described feeling like they were in a horror film after waking up to ‘a giant spider web’.