Brian Wellmeier
I said they were coming back at the beginning of summer. They didn’t come for a while, and I thought maybe we’d been spared from this plague by some divine act or intervention. But they’re here, and if you haven’t seen them by now, covering your home and yard and anything other possible object, tell me your secret.
Joro spiders, known for their distinct yellow, vibrant bluish-black stripes and reddish marks on their abdomen, are an invasive species similar in size and color to the banana spider.
I’ve seen more Joros in two months than I have any other spider in all my years on Earth, building their massive, three-dimensional webs on my front porch, in the windows of my home and my vehicle, on patio chairs, in the trees and some spanning like a thin silk net across the front yard and around the hummingbird feeders.
In August, I counted 18 Joro spiders just on the front porch, and within 48 hours, they’d multiplied into the 20s – some hanging upside down and crawling sideways. One night I thought I saw one try to wrap up a bat caught up in its web.
The hummingbirds no longer visited the feeders, and I’d been driven into a state of almost complete mania. It was time again. They had to go.
With a broom I knocked each and every one of them down into the yard, and wielding a high-powered nozzle attached to a high-pressure hose, the setting on full blast, I sprayed the things left and right and sent them crawling along the porch until they were swept away in deluge.
They were back the next day, their webs rebuilt in almost the exact places they’d been before, like some Stephen King novel, as if all I’d done had never happened at all.
The mania intensified. I drove to Lowes and returned later that day, armed with a full can of poison to feed them. I sprayed and blasted the little demons and watched as they writhed and twitched and dangled and fell about my shoes. By dusk they were gone.
I cleared the webs and the hummingbirds returned. I twisted open a mineral water. I drank and looked at the dozens still hanging from a single threat of web, motionless, dangling in the heat, like some mass grave kept to ward off others who might eye my porch in passing.
How did this happen? I thought. Who takes the blame for bringing them here from Asia?
Like the cane toads and yellow crazy ants in Australia, Joros are a new kind of invasive creature.
Is it too late to send them all back? These are questions that probably will never be answered.
I read that their presence, even in abundance, is positive on the environment as they keep populations of insects harmful to plants in check.
Still, I keep two cans of insecticide at arm’s reach on the porch outside of the house now.
Brain Wellmeier is a staff writer for The Northeast Georgian. Reach him at 706-778-4215 or bwellmeier@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.