Brian Wellmeier
I recall ambling uphill along a footpath from a 3-acre pond in the spring of 2021, a fishing rod for bass in one hand and a rolling cooler being pulled behind me in the other.
The sun was descending behind the treeline, and the creatures of the night were moving from the shadows and into the orange hue of dusk.
That’s when we first saw the three-dimensional web, then a second and a third, weaved like silk in the limbs above.
My fishing partner that night, a graduate from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s degree in fish and wildlife management and an avid, life-long outdoorsman, had long taken notice.
“What is that?” he said.
I squinted through the remaining rays of sunlight and looked closer. “Those are spiders,” I said.
“Yeah, but look at the web – that’s that new spider.”
We made our way farther up the footpath and saw the things had taken the trees, with webs woven in three dimensions and above our heads for what seemed like several hundred feet.
“It’s the one that came here from Asia,” my friend was saying. “I can’t remember what they’re called but – ”
They’re called Joros, and I didn’t care too much to know any more about the things at the time.
But soon I would have no choice, as they seemed to show rapid rates of reproduction and what at first were a few dozen on that fishing property soon multiplied by the hundreds. They covered porches, sheds, entire front yards and trees, and eventually news headlines throughout the region.
I was raised to believe that all life matters, and never to kill anything (with the exception of rats, roaches and creatures with venom) if you don’t have to and unless you eat it.
I don’t eat spiders, and since the Joro’s venom was said to be unharmful to humans, I left them alone.
As long as they’re not in my home, I figured let them be.
But by August the things had taken over both the rural outskirts of Athens and had moved on into suburbia. They built webs outside your window, the beady black eyes watching you as you watched baseball, their webs stretching across driveways, through lawns and wrapping themselves around houses.
A total menace.
One afternoon I drove through a Joro web face first on a riding lawn mower. I swatted the air and clawed at my face, blind and helpless. I vaulted off the machine and rolled once before I was in the kitchen, washing my face and removing my shirt.
The stuff seemed thicker, dense, almost like fishing line.
At this point the Joros, now everywhere, had left me with no other choice.
A line had been crossed. I had to reclaim the property, and I did…or tried to.
I have not seen one yet this spring. But I know they’re coming. Probably awakening from slumber, hatching from eggs, crawling from beneath the earth and into the trees even as I type this sentence.
The experts say there’s nothing we can do about it, and I believe them.
I may not eat spiders, but if I decide to gather a jar of Joros and use them to bait fish, at least something can.
Brian Wellmeier is a staff writer for The Northeast Georgian. Reach him at 706-778-4215 or bwellmeier@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.