Remember our story earlier this week about a literal rain of spiders in a Brazilian town? Oh, sorry... you were just getting over the nightmares? Well, we're not gonna let you off that easy: we've got a follow-up!
It seems the whole spider invasion thing is happening a little more often than you might imagine: according to an item from National Geographic, a similar incident happened last year in the Australian town of Wagga Wagga (stop giggling dammit, it's a real place and people live there), when millions of ground-dwelling spiders took to higher ground after an intense flood. And by “higher ground,” we mean the trees, the houses, the fields... hell, just about everywhere else. The images captured by NG are strongly reminiscent of the 1977 horror flick Kingdom of the Spiders – so there, now you've got your Shatner reference for the week too. You're welcome.
Robert Matthews, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Georgia, said the natural “trampolines” are probably “a dispersal mechanism that allows [spiders] to move out of places where they'd surely be drowned.” He calls the incident a “striking phenomenon” which he'd never seen before, and added, “Gee, it's impressive,” which for some of us is another way of saying “Oh shit, spiders on trampolines, kill me now.”