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I have invasive spiders in my yard.


aomagrat
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59 minutes ago, Mrs.Cicero said:

I get the ones that make those nice circular webs, and the ones that make the webs that look like they've run a zigzag down the middle.  Those are kind of cool.

And if you run your face into a banana spider web, in the dark,  it's as strong as thread.  You can't just "pull" it off.  And you just know there's a 2", fanged, hummingbird eater wrapped up around your head, somewhere.

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When we were in the field in the Army, I used to HATE walking through spiderwebs when we were moving through the woods at night. That was almost as bad as the guy in front of you letting go of a branch that whipped back and popped you in the face. Almost.

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11 hours ago, Eric said:

When we were in the field in the Army, I used to HATE walking through spiderwebs when we were moving through the woods at night. That was almost as bad as the guy in front of you letting go of a branch that whipped back and popped you in the face. Almost.

We didn't have that problem in the Navy.

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14 hours ago, Eric said:

When we were in the field in the Army, I used to HATE walking through spiderwebs when we were moving through the woods at night. That was almost as bad as the guy in front of you letting go of a branch that whipped back and popped you in the face. Almost.

Worst thing about deer hunting in the brush. Spider webs on your face. Now about the whipping branches....should only take a couple times to learn to maintain the proper distance.

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How do spiders travel to suddenly show up in large quantities in a yard?

Looked it up. Basically they go to the tip of a branch when it is windy, secrete a long strand of web material, and when the pull is strong enough let go the branch and sail away. Believe this is called ballooning. 

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9 hours ago, Walt Longmire said:

Worst thing about deer hunting in the brush. Spider webs on your face. Now about the whipping branches....should only take a couple times to learn to maintain the proper distance.

A large number of guys moving through the woods in a single file line is a lot like a constantly-undulating Slinky. Maintaining a consistent separation is pretty much impossible. Plus, unless there is a lot of moonlight, you need to be able to see the cat's eyes on the back of the helmet of the guy in front of you and they are very dim. You have to be pretty close to see them. An orderly movement through the woods can turn into a complete clusterfuck quickly, when the line starts fragmenting into groups of guys striking out in diverging directions. Then you get to see who was actually paying attention to where the rally points were established, during the briefing and that's if they can navigate back to them themselves, in the first place. Most guys suck at land nav at night, even if they were paying attention to where they were on a route.

Anyway, there was a well-established etiquette concerning branches/faces in the Army, at least the parts of it where I served. It was considered bad form to let a branch fly into an unsuspecting troop. Guys got their asses kicked for that sort of thing, on occasion.

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3 hours ago, railfancwb said:

How do spiders travel to suddenly show up in large quantities in a yard?

Looked it up. Basically they go to the tip of a branch when it is windy, secrete a long strand of web material, and when the pull is strong enough let go the branch and sail away. Believe this is called ballooning. 

Have you never seen Charlotte's Web? :)

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On 8/3/2022 at 7:44 PM, Eric said:

When we were in the field in the Army, I used to HATE walking through spiderwebs when we were moving through the woods at night. That was almost as bad as the guy in front of you letting go of a branch that whipped back and popped you in the face. Almost.

Finding a bunch of tarantulas in a foxhole sucks ass too. Sand Hill in summer, Wood in the fall, they get around. Bastards.

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16 hours ago, Eric said:

A large number of guys moving through the woods in a single file line is a lot like a constantly-undulating Slinky. Maintaining a consistent separation is pretty much impossible. Plus, unless there is a lot of moonlight, you need to be able to see the cat's eyes on the back of the helmet of the guy in front of you and they are very dim. You have to be pretty close to see them. An orderly movement through the woods can turn into a complete clusterfuck quickly, when the line starts fragmenting into groups of guys striking out in diverging directions. Then you get to see who was actually paying attention to where the rally points were established, during the briefing and that's if they can navigate back to them themselves, in the first place. Most guys suck at land nav at night, even if they were paying attention to where they were on a route.

Anyway, there was a well-established etiquette concerning branches/faces in the Army, at least the parts of it where I served. It was considered bad form to let a branch fly into an unsuspecting troop. Guys got their asses kicked for that sort of thing, on occasion.

Walking through the pitch black woods of the PNW with my one-eyed younger brother in our youth was interesting. He would have his blind side up against me in order to keep track of me as we negotiated our way home down some old grown up logging road.

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This time of year spider webs around and on the outside of the house is a pain.  Mix some peppermint oil with water in a spray bottle and that gets rid of most of them.  Spiders don't seem to like peppermint.  I knocked down the webs and then sprayed the area, and no more webs for a while.  Spray again in a couple weeks, non toxic and it gets them to take up housekeeping somewhere else. 

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