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We all love to travel. There is something magical about seeing new places and experiencing new things. But then you hear it's raining spiders in Australia and you realize sometimes staying in for the week is the more reasonable choice.
The Sydney Morning Herald's Inga Ting informs us that our own worst nightmare is a reality in the normally lovely Australian town of Goulburn in New South Wales.
Like a scene from the movie "Arachnophobia," local Ian Watson explained to the publication that there was a blanket of webs around the area.
And, as we all know, where there are webs there are spiders, which is why we devolve into a full-on maniac when we happen to walk through a random web.
Watson, however, was in far better spirits considering millions of hellspawn had taken over the area.
He tells Ting, "The whole place was covered in these little black spiderlings and when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky."
Here's a look thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald:
Ting states that Watson thought the image was beautiful, but continued that there was some frustrating aspects to the ensuing mass of webs: "But at the same time I was annoyed because ... you couldn't go out without getting spider webs on you. And I've got a beard as well, so they kept getting in my beard."
And this is where we take a torch to the beard, but we assume Watson merely wiped the nuisance away as if it were completely natural to have spiders drop in like they own the place.
Now the report states that spiders seemed to be "raining down" on the area, which is explained thanks to Martyn Robinson who works at the Australian Museum.
Robinson spoke with Ting and explained how spiders could come to fall gracefully to the ground and cover the area with billowy webs.
Ting writes: "The first, a dispersal technique called 'ballooning,' is more commonly used by baby spiders, although some adults use it as well. The spider climbs to the top of vegetation and releases a streamer of silk that catches on the breeze and carries the spider aloft."
And because you don't need to sleep at night, there is video evidence of this occurring in the United States.
Here is a video of the event near Flagstaff:
And here is a spider in the act of 'ballooning.'
Now we are sure Goulburn is a beautiful place. The visitors website touts myriad attractions and sights such as parks, wineries and public displays of art.
However, its biggest attraction for spider lovers may just be the strange weather it's having at the moment.
For those of us wary of arachnids, we will wait for this to all blow over and will be inside if you need us.
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