Millions of spiders have taken over a Memphis neighborhood, building a web in a field that is a whopping half-mile long.
It’s a nightmare for residents, and just imagine how scary it is for those who cope witharachnophobia — the fear of spiders.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Frances Ward told Action News 5. “It’s like a horror movie. Never seen nothing like this before. They’re in the air, flying everywhere. They all on the house, on the side of the windows.”
Experts say that the small spiders probably were there for a while, but just went unnoticed.
“It could be juveniles, millions, in a big emergence event, or adults of a tiny species, probably a sheetweb spider — leaving for some reason possibly knowable only to them,” Memphis Zoo curator Steve Reichling tells the station. “In fields and meadows, there are often literally millions of spiders doing their thing, unseen and unappreciated by us.
“I would not want to live in a world where such things were no longer possible,” he continued. “The presence of these spiders tells us that all is well with nature at that location.”
The movies portray a more horrifying picture of a similar, yet exaggerated situation. In the 1977 William Shatner schlock film “Kingdom of the Spiders,” arachnids attack and take over an entire Arizona town, leaving many people dead.
In Memphis, the spiders just seem to be taking up space, but residents are hoping the city does something about it.
“Clean this area up and spray for these spiders and make it safe,” Ida Morris said to the station. “There are kids running around. A spider could bite the kids or anything.”
Maybe they should call Shatner into action.
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