The Web

I'm afraid of many things and among these are dirty public toilets, camping and appearing at a dinner party in the same dress as someone else. In the natural world, I have to say snakes in particular and reptiles in general give me the creeps. Strangely enough, spiders have never really been the stuff of my nightmares - until now that is!

Even people who keep spiders as pets would find the following photo, if not disturbing, at least a little creepy:



Doesn't it look like something straight out of Stephen King's imagination? Here is the picture again in horror movie mode:



I actually felt a chill run down my spine when I saw them. I'm not even scared of spiders ( I actually used to play with them as a kid!) but the sight of so many large ones crawling about was a little too much for me!


I heard about this giant web from a newfound friend, L, whom I met at a birthday lunch a few weeks ago. She'd spied it while jogging through a residential area and her enthusiastic description of it ("its the BIGGEST spider web I've EVER SEEN and there were at least TWENTY SPIDERS there) propelled me to go and check it out.

After getting over my initial shock, I decided that I would take some pictures. I felt that it was the only way anyone would believe me when I told them about The Web ( I have to admit that I initially thought L was exaggerating!)

I got out of the car and stood as close as I dared (which was still a good distance away!) A few local people happened to walk past and saw me fiddling about with my camera, aiming at the spiders and they all looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe they're used to 1 meter-wide spider webs complete with 20 large spiders attached and were wondering what all the fuss was about!

In the end, my nerves got the best of me and I couldn't get close enough to get a good shot with my tiny camera. I related the whole thing to The Engineer who was immediately gripped by an urge to go and have a look for himself.

He bravely got a lot closer than I did and the photos are the result of his courage. I think this particular picture he took is exceptionally good:





It looks like the thing has managed to defy gravity and is hanging, mid-air. Eeeewww!!!! Despite the horror captured in the photos, I think it was a lot worse looking at the spiders live because they would all suddenly start crawling around on the web! Ghastly!

I would have imagined that an amazingly horrible web of this size would be hanging sinisterly in the recesses of some dark Amazonian jungle and not in the middle of a residential area in the biggest city in Tanzania.

This sort of thing always reminds that, in the end, we shouldn't be surprised because TIA - This Is Africa!