This same sort of thing happened in1999, in Pensacola, except that the invaders back then weren't alien, but just monstrously huge, and their webs even bigger!
Yeah, the first one in the US was spotted about 20 miles from where I live. See: Trees And Other Things | Page 138 | SENIORSonly CLUB (Post # 2063) The webs are huge.
We have had some huge yellow spiders outside making those great big webs. I saw one catching something that was struggling to escape, thought it was a big bug of some sort until it flew away and it was a hummingbird ! Now that I have seen the Joro pictures, I am wondering if that is what we have here. We are not far from Georgia, so if they are there, they could well be in Alabama also. After almost running into the spider web the first time, I started watching out for them, and took a long stick and started ruining the spiderweb, because it was right where i was taking off dead vines. I didn’t hurt the spider, but I chased him up to the top of his web and made him run off and hide.
Those ones in Pensacola built layers of webs, going back and back into the bushes, and between the trees, like some sort of end-of-millennium Omen. Broomsticks the only defense after dark! I'm right here in North Georgia, but haven't seen any Joros, though the smaller non-orb-weavers are getting to be really annoying, throwing single strands across the front stoop.
Ugh! I had nightmares about webs during the Summer of Horror in Pensacola --- they engulfed outdoor spaces entirely, and I woke feeling covered in goo. Hope the Joros don't show up here en masse!
We have the mildly venomous one down here but so far 'knock on wood' haven;t been bit. The locals here say it is like a bee sting. These down here that like to build web right at face level across trials and we've had them stuck on us many times so they must nto be agressive. If you takr down web they will build higher up .Locals call them banana spiders. Whatever they caused me lots of crazed fits peeling them off,I'm not afraid of spiders but don't like them on my face either. https://storyteller.travel/banana-spider/
I've seen those spiders around here, posed in the shape of an X in their web! Of course I had to go from article to article online, looking at them, and also some of the more venomous ones. :::shudders:::
Yeah, looking at the pictures, I guess that’s what we had. My prior thoughts on them were that they looked like the garden spiders I encountered in South Florida; large, bright colored non-aggressive arachnids which weave a wonderfully symmetrical web. Most of the spiders we have here spin webs that have no obvious direction and are just a gobble of dust gathering silk found in just about every crevice imaginable. Alas, the cold is coming in and I haven’t seen one in 2 or 3 weeks but during July and August we had 4 that I know of and probably more that I didn’t see.