Giant spider community – in Texas, of course

Bug Girl has all the details — spiders being closer to her blog’s core topic — but this news is just about 90 minutes from here, much closer for North Dallasites.

Did you see the giant web at Lake Tawakoni State Park? It was on the CBS Evening News tonight, and it’s all over the blogs today. The Washington Post has this delightful quote (delightful to those of us who think of all the West Nile virus that won’t be spread):

“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent of the [Lake Tawakoni State] park about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”

Ah, the screech of millions of mosquitoes, about to be eaten.

By the way, DDT kills these spider very well. DDT spraying, in such a case, is a favor to the mosquitoes — spiders can be significant contributors to pest control.

See Bug Girl’s post for all the science — her post is practically a lesson plan just waiting to be downloaded.

And, it’s pronounced tuh-WOK-uh-nee. Named after a local tribe of Native Americans, “a Caddoan tribe of the Wichita group.”