4 She thought the spiders were just dust in the corner Credit: Twitter / @LydiiautyAnd spider experts say that the creatures choose this time of year to emerge because it's when they're ready to mate.One said: “The male spiders come out the woodwork during this time of year as it is breeding season and they are searching for female spiders.' They are actually there in the home at other times of year but they are hidden away - under the floor, in the attic, in the basement. If you find them, it’s pretty much impossible to rid your house of them.“They may disappear for a period of time, but other spiders will come in their place.
An Australian couple got a creepy surprise after trying to get rid of a Wolf Spider as it scurried across the kitchen floor of their home in Hallet Cove, South Australia. Danny Ford grabbed a.
The best thing to do if you find them is put them in a shed - it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind. 4 The randy spiders are driven into the open by their desire to mate, having spent the rest of the year hidden away Credit: Getty ImagesRemove any webs that crop up and try to fill in any gaps in pipework, door and window frames, skirting boards and masonry to keep the creeps out.Removing any sheltering sites like compost piles and garden bags from near the outside of your home is another way to deter the insects, alongside using lighting that is less attractive to the flies which spiders feed on. ©News Group Newspapers Limited in England No. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. 'The Sun', 'Sun', 'Sun Online' are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's in accordance with our. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our site.
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If you thought exploding spiders with baby spiders inside were terrifying, think again.
In the middle of the Australian countryside, a phenomenon has been taking place that is often described as 'spider rain.' The event, which sees paddocks covered in kilometres of spider webs, was first recorded in 1914. It was originally known as 'angel hair' and was generally believed to be connected to mythology or alien life.
See also: Man tries to kill spider, releases hundreds of baby spiders instead
On May 4, 2015, farmer Ian Watson walked outside his home on a 500-acre property in Goulburn, New South Wales, to see hundreds of strands of a fine material falling from the sky. Hanging to the ends of the strands — which reached up to 10 metres in length and had the appearance of cotton — were baby spiders. Millions of them.
'Some of the strands of web were quite long waving in the breeze. For the most part, they were one-metre long, pieces of web just hanging on skyhooks,' Watson told Mashable Australia. 'It was just unbelievable how many [threads] there were, and how many spiders were landing on my house. The shed, the cars, everything.'
The amazing phenomenon was recorded as far away as 30 kilometres, in the town of Marulan. With locals taking to the Goulburn community page on Facebook to record their sightings.
'There were millions of individual threads coming down, with spiders ... No matter where you looked there were spiders floating along,' Watson said. 'We had easily a couple of hundred spiders on one six-metre wall of our house.'
Despite getting some web caught in his beard, Watson said his major concern was for the safety of his four young children — as hundreds and hundreds of spiders covered his home.
'I took to them with a can of Raid, mainly for the kids. Part of living in the bush is you get snakes and spiders as part of the territory, and you get used to it, but I thought I don't need an additional 200 spiders. And they are just the ones I saw, let alone the ones that landed on the roof.
'Because they were little baby spiders, it wasn't as freaky — if they were huntsman spiders coming down, I think I would have set fire to the place and taken off,' he added.
Locals thought it may have been caused by spiders nesting in a wind turbine, while Watson called UFO researcher Bill Chalker for his insight and to send him a sample to test — before confirming it was simply spider web and 'nothing more sinister.'
On Sunday, Watson noted the phenomenon again just after lunchtime. This time not as many threads were falling from the sky, but it was still impressive enough for him to mention it on the local page on Facebook.
'It was nowhere near the same scale as the first time, but it was pretty amazing,' he said of Sunday's experience. 'When they are within a few metres of you, you can see the spiders dangling off. It looked like a string bomb went off.'
Retiree Keith Basterfield from South Australia has been studying the peculiar events for almost 15 years and cataloguing his discoveries. His interest in the strange occurrence began when a man named Kevin Dixon showed him a photo taken in Albury in May 1974.
'I thought it was so amazing that there were literally millions of spiders caught in the web on that paddock that day, and I started looking around for previous falls,' Basterfield told Mashable Australia. 'A lot of these things were pre-internet. I found quite a few interesting things dating back to 1914 of falls in Australia.'
Basterfield has documented 20 occurrences throughout Australia and now using the Internet he can see the phenomenon stretches across the globe — with falls in Denmark and Brazil. The biggest in Australia was in Esperence, Western Australia in 1999, which saw 80 kilometres of spider web covering the ground.
During his research, Basterfield has discovered the falls of spider rain happen on clear days with a slight wind after heavy rain and are normally seen in May or August.
The bizarre event is caused by baby spiders migrating for food, such as mosquitos that come out after rain. The spiders cast silk from their bodies, capture the light breeze and float up in the sky.
'They throw out a protein based thread of spider's web from their body, they extend it into the air, the wind catches it and they take off and use it as a parachute,' Basterfield explained. 'So they are literally floating on a parachute of their own body silk. The spiders then just jump off the web and go into the ground and hide, so they use it as a way of migrating.'
The webs, sometimes with baby spiders trapped inside, can travel as high as 20,000 feet and they have even be found stuck to the side of aircraft, Basterfield added.
The whole experience is fleeting, but more images and videos are being captured due to the Internet and camera phones.
'The web, as a protein based thread just dissolves over time, over the next day or so. The next morning you will go out and see absolutely nothing,' he said. 'It is an interesting, natural phenomenon.'
Nothing to fear, people, nothing to fear.
Correction: Ian Watson's surname has been corrected from the incorrect surname Walker.
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