Millions of tiny spiders recently fell from the sky in Australia, alarming residents whose properties were suddenly covered with not only the creepy critters, but also mounds of their silky threads. But that’s not where the frightful news ends: Experts say that such arachnid rains aren’t as uncommon as you might think.
This month’s spider downpour in the country’s Southern Tablelands region is just the most recent example of a phenomenon commonly known as “spider rain” or, in some circles, “angel hair,” because of the silky, hairlike threads the spiders leave behind. Ian Watson, who lives in the region affected by the spooky shower, took to Facebook to describe what this strange “weather” looks like, according to the Goulburn Post.
The spider part wouldn’t bother me so much, but cleaning up all that silk would be a pain.
PaulW
Call SyFy Channel, I got a new idea for a cheap no-budget horror movie.
JPL
I’d move.
OzarkHillbilly
I’ve seen one, tho nothing at all as extreme as this one, and they are really pretty cool.
TaMara (BHF)
I’m with you on the webbing. Traipsing through the thick woods on Cape Cod as a kid, it was always horrible when I would accidentally stumble through an orb spider web (that were sometimes 5 feet long, from tree limb to the ground). Spiders don’t bother me, but ugh, tangled in web was awful. Then I’d also have to look for the spider to make sure I wasn’t taking her with me. (Queue scene from Raiders).
Mike J
@PaulW: Spider-cane!
Valdivia
Not a fan of it myself. I am not great with spiders having grown up in a tropical country where they were constantly chasing me.
OT–who was joking yesterday that the demilitarization of police would be seen by the crazies as part of the invasion of Texas conspiracy? You have won a prize.
Karen in GA
Well, just fuck the Outback, then.
Amir Khalid
These aren’t man-eating spiders, are they? (He asked fearfully.)
MattF
For some reason, I’ve always had a rather positive view of spiders– maybe I missed out on arachnology as a profession. But millions of them parachuting down from the sky on spider silk is probably over the line, even for me.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Note to self: remove Australia from my bucket list.
The Amazon rain forest removed itself when I found out they have a spider so large that its primary prey is birds.
Karen in GA
O/T — One of the sidebar ads is for kitty urns, which is not helpful right now. Phoebe’s still at UGA. Her pacemaker is working fine, her lungs are clearing, the congestive heart failure is fine now — but she’s still sick. She’s back with her internal medicine vet there, who’s trying to figure out why her blood pressure is low, she hasn’t eaten since last Thursday, and she looks dazed all the time.
And on top of that, even with the pet health coverage and the majority of the cost being reimbursed, I’m really uncomfortable racking up this bill.
Should get more test results later today, then we’ll hopefully know more about what to do. I don’t like this one bit.
Frankensteinbeck
Ballooning is tremendously common in spiders. Like the article says, what happened here is a freak of the weather made so many come down at once, in one spot, that laymen noticed.
EDIT – If it helps, remember that for a spider to balloon, it has to be ridiculously tiny, like pin head tiny. Even the deadliest species (really only a concern in Australia anyway) can’t hurt you at that size.
EDIT EDIT – @Mnemosyne (tablet):
Naah, that’s a myth. There are spiders big enough to eat small birds in most tropical areas, but birds are never their primary food. They can’t catch birds! Mostly the bird eating is if they get lucky and wander over a nest, or the colony weavers manage to snare one. ‘Goliath Bird Eating Spiders’ are big, but the layman couldn’t tell they’re much bigger than African or Australian tarantulas.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Come to Malaysia. We have insect-eating plants.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Karen in GA: I’m thinking good thoughts for Phoebe and for you. (And Iggy of course.)
Mustang Bobby
I have spiders all over my back patio; the little “smiley-face” variety, so named because their bodies look like the icon, except they’re black and white, not yellow. Their webs are annoying to run into, but I pretty much leave them alone since they eat mosquitoes. If they get in the house, though, they’re fair game, and I’m just as likely to step on them as I am to escort them outside.
dedc79
Clearly the first of ten plagues to strike the Australian Pharaoh – Tony Abbott
Jerzy Russian
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I believe there is a tribe living in the rain forest down there that considers the giant spiders to be a delicacy.
Ryan
I live in Durham, and we have cankerworms that rain down for a few weeks every spring. Disgusting because you can’t avoid walking under all the trees.
Mike J
@Jerzy Russian: And everyone gets a drumstick.
Buffalo Rude
Raining spiders? That’s when I get in the “Nope! Mobile” and nope! the fuck right outta there.
Jerzy Russian
We have some fairly big spiders here (Gray spiders?) that can weave these large webs fairly quickly. I don’t mind the spiders, but I would appreciate it if they did not weave their webs in the walkways. There is apparently something called a “California Lawn Spider” that is supposed to be large, but I have yet to see one.
askew
That is literally my worst nightmare. Yikes!
Michael G
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
I’m okay with insect-eating plants since they don’t dangle from the bathroom light in the middle of the night to play “Surprise!” when you’re trying to get ready for bed.
I don’t want to kill all spiders since they serve an important function, I just want them to stay the hell away from me.
Karen in GA
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks. Iggy actually fears Phoebe. She’s a sweetie, but she can be a bit full of herself — and Iggy doesn’t understand that you don’t just go bounding up and shoving your entire face in a princess kitty’s fur.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Frankensteinbeck:
There’s a reason they used that spider in”Arachnophobia,” which I foolishly watched on cable one night. Though apparently they did have to dress it up in costume a bit to make it even scarier.
maya
An educational tale for all you spider sissies: http://www.storiestogrowby.com/stories/bruce_and_spider_body.html
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Karen in GA:
I hope she pulls through — my Boris used to get very low blood pressure and a heart murmur when he was stressed, so it might be that. Have they tried the liverwurst-like canned cat food? You warm it up a bit in the microwave to make it nice and stinky.
Matt McIrvin
Must have been SOME PIG in the vicinity.
kc
The spider part would bother me A LOT.
kc
@JPL:
To Mars.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Thank goodness it never rains bears.
ruemara
@Karen in GA: Thinking good thoughts for kitty.
Hmph. I got booted out of work. I have a cold, a wee one and they said, “Nu’uh, go home!”. I’m stuck working at home. this bites.
@Matt McIrvin: win
Karen in GA
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I’m not sure what they’ve been trying to feed her. I’ll ask next time I talk to them, and whether it has a strong smell. Thanks.
FortGeek
@Amir Khalid: Only if you’re a very small man. John McCain might be in trouble.
samiam
Any guesses how may posts we will see from Cole this week defending everything fat bastard Christie does and critisizing everything next President Clinton does?
Last week really took the cake. Either Cole is not trying to hide his Republican stripes anymore or he really is in his own little world thinking his DNA is actually progressive now because….dronezzzzz are bad.
Comrade Dread
Australians don’t fear hell because they live in Australia.
bemused
Tent caterpillars or as we call them in northern MN, army worms, are gross, squishy worms. They arrive in 10-15-20 year cycles during spring, eating new leaves on trees. If the infestation is heavy enough, they will eat a lot more than tree leaves in their path and will leave acres and acres, huge swatches of forest bare. Most trees will rebud. The worms aren’t poisonous but have caused traffic accidents from masses of them getting squished on highways creating a slick peanut butter surface.
No one is happy about an army worm invasion. They travel north piling up on the south side of buildings where they die and reek like hell. It’s a very soft worm so they get squashed easily and leave stains on walks, house siding, outdoor furniture. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any wild critters that want to eat the worms, not even bears or lake fish. Guinea hens are the only animals that will go for them that I’ve heard of anecdotally. Nothing in local news yet if we can expect army worms this year.
SatanicPanic
@Jerzy Russian: probably not so different from crab
Linda Featheringill
I’m a member of the Arachnaphobia Club. Intellectually, I realize that they fill a niche in Earth’s ecology but emotionally, they scare the #%$#$%# out of me. Ewww!
I twice tried to watch the movie, Arachnaphobia, but couldn’t stay with it either time.
I’m a real spider sissy.
FortGeek
@Frankensteinbeck: Every spring, shortly after I put up my window air conditioner, I get a couple of ballooning baby spiders in my room riding the air current from the AC box to me. I guide them off somewhere else and wish them well going after whatever bugs deserve to get caught.
Valdivia
@Karen in GA:
sending warm get well vibes to Phoebe and hugs to you.
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
ummm, why would you put that in my head? yikes.
WereBear
I spend some formative years in Florida. Cockroaches squick me out more.
But coming down from the sky? Ixnay on the iderrainspay.
Punchy
I’m sked’d to go to Australia in Sept. Now I’m forced to ask that my company puts me up in a NON-spider-raining hotel near NON-spider raining restaurants. Dammit, more details I hadn’t even thought of….
JPL
@Karen in GA: I hope you get good news.
Dave C
@Amir Khalid:
Luckily for us, there exists no spider in the world that actually eats humans. A very small number of them have bites that are harmful to humans, but the overwhelming majority (>99%) of the more than 40,000 described species of spiders in the world are totally harmless to humans. Even better, they are most definitely not harmless to pest insects, so they are great to have around!
Peale
@Amir Khalid: Apparently they can travel great distances…so which way does the wind blow? From Malaysia to Australia or vice versa.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Arachnophobia is about as scientifically accurate as most disaster movies – IE, entomologists run around waving their arms in the air and screaming ‘NONONOITDOESNOTWORKTHATWAY!’ You are probably not surprised.
Elizabelle
It would be cool if the zillions of spider webs, or spiders themselves, contained a cure for pancreatic cancer, or any type of cancer or disease.
Maybe they’re a gift.
Not being inundated with spiders in Northern Virginia — last night, saw my first lightning bug/firefly of the season, and that was charming.
Dave C
@Elizabelle:
Well, I don’t know about cancer cures, but spider silk and venom proteins have a number of very interesting biochemical properties that are actively being researched for practical purposes.
FortGeek
@Frankensteinbeck: I felt like running around and waving my arms like that when the trailer for “San Andreas” came on before “Mad Max” the other day. So much wrong with it, it really should have gone straight to the Sci-Fi Channel.
Elizabelle
Was wondering if the spider rain was a portent of climate change and, yeah, maybe so, but maybe no. From John’s link:
maya
@WereBear:
New meaning to the term “hit the silk”.
The 101st Arachnid Div: “We’ll leave the screaming to you”.
Amir Khalid
@Linda Featheringill:
@Dave C:
Did you see Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets? Now that movie is the stuff of arachnophobics’ nightmares.
Elizabelle
@Dave C: Good to know.
Bees have gone from being summertime terrorists to agricultural angels, now vanishing and missed.
Maybe the spider needs better PR too.
scav
@Elizabelle: Baby Spider Flash Mob!
JPL
@Elizabelle: There’s no amount of PR that will take that image out of my mind.
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle: I remember being in a soccer field one day when I was a child living in the desert and saw this happen. It wasn’t quite this crazy- dozens or maybe hundreds floating through the air on little parachutes. That doesn’t prove anything, you just reminded me of it. It was pretty cool actually.
Felonius Monk
I thought spiders only came wearing red and blue ‘jammies and took out the bad guys and rethugs (but then I repeat myself).
Dave C
@Amir Khalid:
Heh. Yeah, I did. Good stuff.
Growing up I was deathly afraid of spiders, but somewhere along the way, the fear just…vanished. And now after spending roughly the past 5 years or so studying spiders in the lab and in the field (mostly the former), I can’t even remember where that visceral reaction came from. It’s weird how that works.
Germy Shoemangler
Something scarier than spiders: town hall meeting.
scav
And now I’m trying to figure out just how a spider does a moon walk.
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
Birds have been caught in webs before. The problem, from the spider’s perspective, is: what do you do next?
Elizabelle
From I fucking love science, re spiders. A friend put this up today on Facebook, and it was poignant.
I always try to escort spiders outside. Cockroaches, no.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes:
Sort of like a tea-partier winning an election.
Cervantes
@Dave C:
Not counting allergic reactions, I presume.
Valdivia
@Germy Shoemangler:
Is this recent? I am afraid to know what State he’s from.
Germy Shoemangler
@Valdivia: It was posted to youtube in 2014. He is from Oklahoma.
Spiders are fluffy bunnies compared to that town hall.
Bridenstine introduced the Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013 (H.R. 2413; 113th Congress) into the House on June 18, 2013. Bridenstine introduced the bill in response to several 2013 Oklahoma tornadoes. Bridenstine said that “my state has seen all too many times the destructive power of tornadoes and severe weather. In the wake of the latest outbreak in May that cost 48 lives, it is painfully clear that we must do more.” Bridenstine claimed 30 times more money was being spent on climate change research than on weather forecasting and warning, a claim that is not true.
Frankensteinbeck
@FortGeek:
Screaming Mount Pony Fuck, yes, I had that reaction. I had it for Jurassic World, too. Mad Max was equally unrealistic, but wasn’t pretending to be. If you’re going to make a movie about earthquakes, learn something about friggin’ earthquakes. If you’re going to make a movie about dinosaurs, learn something about friggin’ dinosaurs. The frog DNA excuse actually makes things worse, since the idea you could splice a dinosaur with anything except a bird is insane.
Look, people. The major predatory dinosaur branches, the theropods, were basically birds. They had feathers. They were hind leg focused hunters. I will very, very dimly allow you your unbelievably stupid-ass rendition of them as super-geniuses who somehow know what a tracking implant is, but at least get something right. No, don’t hide behind ‘feathers aren’t scary!’ A feathery T-Rex jumping on a human, picking him up in its hind claws, and biting him in half will send people home with nightmares. Make them act like predatory birds, and they’ll be scary looking like predatory birds. Giving a bird feline and canine mouth-oriented body language, yeah, makes it a lot less intimidating. You might as well be threatening someone with the handle of a knife.
Pogonip
@Amir Khalid: They sound like balloon spiders. Think of them as little Charlottes.
Dave C
@Cervantes:
As far as I know, around 40 species of spiders have bites that are considered to be “medically significant”. I would imagine that this might include very common allergic reactions, but I’m not sure. I doubt it includes relatively uncommon allergic reactions. This is a pretty interesting article (trigger warning: some scary looking spider pictures):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medically_significant_spider_bites
Valdivia
@Germy Shoemangler:
the depth of the crazy seems to be bottomless.
Alex
@samiam: Troll harder
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
Totally OT, Amir, but what’s the background to the ruckus in Malaysia about Tottenham and Liverpool going there to play friendlies against local teams?
scav
@Germy Shoemangler: No true teapartspider would ever so over-engineer a web so as to allow it to potentially capture a bird. Waste of funds. They can, however, be observed convincing even smaller prey of their own ilk to wander over, apply elmer’s glue to themselves and stay put until eaten, all on their own bootstraps.
FortGeek
@Frankensteinbeck: The folks with me at “Mad Max” were drooling over the “Jurassic” trailer. Heh. Nope!
Tenar Darell
@Frankensteinbeck: Was Michael Crichton’s book ever really accurate? Based on his other attempts, at other topics, I’ve always suspected that he was basing his novels off of junk science or discredited theories when he wrote them.
As for using birds as exemplars for behaviors, riled up wild geese are scary enough, I don’t understand why the producers and animators wouldn’t use them.
shell
Wow. I’m never going to that restaurant again!
***********
I actually like spiders, especially Daddy Long Legs. But that’s definitely too much of a good thing!
Botsplainer
@maya:
I love spiders and encourage them around the house, particularly wolf spiders.
rikyrah
I would be screaming my head off.
Lavocat
Cole, you have no problem with MILLIONS OF SPIDERS RAINING FROM THE SKIES!!!!????
Sounds like a really bad acid trip to me.
No fucking thank you, man!
This is even worse than snakes on a plane!
How much worse could you make it? Jumping spiders? Who spit acid? And are registered Republicans? Again: Worst. Bad. Acid. Trip. EVAH!
Wait … great idea for another bad movie in 3-2-1.
Amir Khalid
@SRW1:
A fan group says the friendlies will provide little if any benefit to the national team’s prep for World Cup qualifiers a couple of weeks later, while causing local league matches to be disrupted. Apparently the local clubs haven’t made alternative arrangements for fans who’ve paid for tickets to the local league matches.
Zinsky
Roll Karl Rove naked through some honey and leave him out in some spider rain to let those bastards have their way with the walking pile of human excrement!
raven
Been fishing since sunrise. Only 1 small blue but the pelicans are feasting 100 yards offshore. Back at it!
Amir Khalid
@Tenar Darell:
Crichton was a physician, as I recall. You learn fuck-all about dinosaurs in medical school. Same goes for global warming, of which Crichton was a denier.
Roger Moore
@Valdivia:
The Balloon-Juice accepted way of saying this is “Peak Wingnut is a Myth”.
Fair Economist
@Karen in GA:
Hoping for a fast recovery for Phoebe.
The ad is probably the nastiness of the internet at work. I’ll bet you’ve been googling kitty diseases, and some urn company probably figured out that people who google kitty diseases are more likely to buy urns, so they’re serving you an ad. The current internet invades your privacy relentlessly and when things in your life aren’t going well, proceeds to grind your nose in it. Don’t sweat it, because their predictive power is pretty low – I have a number of wildly inappropriate ad types that chase me. I can figure out why they chase me, but they’re still totally off-base.
shell
There are spiders falling from the sky…..and they’re voting Republican.
Valdivia
@Roger Moore:
of course! how could I have forgotten :)
Also, too.
Fair Economist
Spiders are generally antisocial, often cannibalistic, generally easily frightened, and like to suck the lifeblood from other creatures. They probably would vote Republican.
Botsplainer
@Dave C:
About a year ago, I got a tropical spider bite while in Belize on a diving trip. It took about 12 hours to go from annoying welt to “holy shit, I’ve got a lump the size of my fist, the center is brown to black, it is weeping and it hurts like a motherfucker in a throbbing way.”
I noticed just how bad it got as I came up after my first dive of that day (nice wall dive, max depth 85-90 feet down) and saw it oozing. Still made the second dive – we were about 20 miles out to sea.
The doc that the resort called when we returned chewed my ass out for making that second dive. Talked about the body under pressure, particularly at depths below 60 feet, and said I was lucky as shit that I didn’t have a stroke at depth – mentioned how nice THAT would have been for my fellow divers. He gave me something in the Ceflex family along with a multispectrum antibiotic ointment and barred me from diving for at least one day.
henqiguai
@Amir Khalid (#13):
Why? We got them right here in North America (e.g. Venus Fly-trap, the Sun Dew). Or are we talking epic battles between tropical bird-eating humongous spiders versus ginormous semi-mobile carnivorous plants???
Amir Khalid
@henqiguai:
Damn, I’d pay to see that movie.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Those are monkey cups, right? My former boss was trying to raise some in a terrarium in his office so he could extract their proteolytic enzymes. Sometimes being a scientist is very cool.
Mike in NC
When living in NoVA years ago, I came home one day and saw a large ‘coffee table’ type book lying in the middle of the living room floor. My wife had put a note on top saying she had used it to kill a giant spider. I sort of chuckled since we didn’t have any species of giant spider in the state. When I picked up the book I found the bigger flicking (squashed) spider I’d ever seen outside of a zoo. Like a small tarantula. Never did try to find out what it was.
Valdivia
Speaking of insects: Charles Murray at it again now with more derp.
Worth a read
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
Hm. I saw another interesting example recently for European football interests bigfooting that of other continents: Apparently, CONMEBOL has waved the rule for national teams being entitled to require their players to join the team 15 days before a tournament. Otherwise Barca would have been forced to play the upcoming Champions League final without Messi, Neymar, and Suarez because the Copa America starts only five days after the CL final in Berlin.
Elizabelle
Speaking of spiders:
Paul Krugman’s superb “Errors and Lies” is #3 at the moment on the NYTimes list of most emailed articles.
The anti-Krugman is also on the list, at #14. David Brooks, with the humility to write a column entitled: “Learning from Mistakes.”
And then proving he can not.
Boboprose:
But actually, it does.
A leading reader comment, with 470 approvals, by proudcalib:
I don’t see how the NY Times and its credibility can afford employing Judith Miller and Bill Kristol in the past, and David Brooks now.
This Brooks column is letter to the editor complaint-worthy.
Gravenstone
This seems to be several levels of fucked up. Students forced to endure transvaginal exams or suffer reduced grades or professional blacklisting.
Roger Moore
@Valdivia:
What do you have against insects? They deserve better than to be compared to Charles Murray.
Pappenheimer
For those of us with ophiodophobia, Amr should be able to confirm that Malaysia has a species of flying (well, gliding) snake. They don’t migrate, though.
Valdivia
@Roger Moore:
hhis. I apologize to the insect kingdom, they are too good for the Murray comparision.
Tenar Darell
@Amir Khalid:
QFT
Expanding on this, I suspect you learn fuck-all about a long list of things in medical school based on the doctors who are running for President, and the doctors who are state and federal representatives.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
can he go on a honeymoon with his new girlfriend and relieve us from all his pablum for a while?
Interrobang
Millions of Australian spiders on a house? I’d set the thing on fire with all my stuff inside. It’d just be safer that way.
ms_canadada
@askew: I’m with you. I’m terrified of spiders, although I recognize their important contribution to the ecosystem. However – NOT in the house. My Dad used to suggest that I, “ask them outside.”
Years ago I wrote an essay entitled, ‘How to Kill a Spider’ incorporating all the methods my mother taught me, and some I came up with on my own. The best one, IMO, was spraying the critter with ‘STIFF’ hairspray.
Twisted, eh?
Dave C
@Botsplainer:
Crazy! I wonder if maybe it was a Chilean recluse. In any case, I am glad you (apparently) recovered!
Elizabelle
@Valdivia: Judith Miller?
Young Brooks has a romantic interest? Do tell.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
if there were any justice it would be her. After his divorce he now seems to be dating a woman in her 20s, I have tried not to read too much about it because of the yuck factor!
Elizabelle
@Valdivia: Great. Now he’s going to be an expert on teh youths.
Rich (In Name Only) in Reno
Sounds like something described in one of those Charles Fort books that were popular in the 1960s.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
he already wrote an article of internet dating, I am sure more wonders are next!
Karen in GA
@Fair Economist: Thanks. Actually, the reason for the ads is even simpler — I was looking up kitty urns last month when my then-oldest, Smudge, had to be put to sleep. It’s been a bad month for kitties in my home.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: The giant spider shows up in one of the rides at Universal Florida, “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.” I enjoyed the ride, which is fairly visually intense all around, and forgot all about that bit (the Whomping Willow and the Quidditch scene were more memorable). But a lot of the reviews of it are like “This ride scared me to death because BIG SPIDER!!!!!!!!1” If you’ve got the fear, nothing else is as relevant.
Matt McIrvin
@Rich (In Name Only) in Reno: I had an “amazing true science facts” book as a kid, “Nature At Its Strangest”, that described a massive ballooning-spider incident in vivid detail. I think I’d already encountered the idea form “Charlotte’s Web,” as mentioned above.
rikyrah
I would still be screaming and running all over my house. This is absolutely terrifying to me.
Matt McIrvin
…There’s a window screen in our back yard where, for a few springs in a row, spiders would place their egg sacs, and you could look through the kitchen window and see the hundreds of tiny tiny spiderlings hatch out and crawl away. It was adorable.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@henqiguai:
Semi-mobile carnivorous plants would be Triffids. Sadly, the movie doesn’t hold up. Some things are scarier without pictures:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffid
Comrade Mary
I adore spiders. They do good for the ecosystem. In closeup, many of them are incredibly goddamn gorgeous. Our collective conflicted feelings about them have even spawned a meme. (Arachnophobes, don’t click that link, ‘k?)
But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t squirming just a little as I whipped a cloth at some garage shelving this weekend as I tried to clean off the clusters of spider eggs. Ick.
donnah
I recommend Kingdom of the Spiders, 1977 which has William Shatner as a small town vet who tries to save a town threatened by spider invasion.
Heh.
ms_canadada
@Matt McIrvin: No! That’s not adorable, that’s a nightmare. When I was pregnant with my first child, 35 years ago, a spider ‘gave birth’ on the cove ceiling of our bedroom. My husband was working the night shift, so I was on my own in the killing field. There I was, 8 months pregnant, jumping up to kill those teeny-tiny sob babies that had populated the ceiling. I was a mess of fear and loathing, weeping and cursing that my husband wasn’t there. I still have nightmares of that horrific night. Yes, I respect those critters, but I do hate them with a passion.