On August 30th, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran a story titled, “World Wide Web debate: Texas-size spider’s snare is a bit of a mystery,” by Bill Hanna. The story featured the following photo:
Reprint Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The story is no longer available online, but it began as follows:
Texas-size spider’s snare is a bit of a mystery
Wed, Aug. 29, 2007
By BILL HANNA
billhanna@star-telegram.com
The 200-yard web at Lake Tawakoni State Park is generating buzz among entomologists on the Internet.
WILLS POINT — If you hate creepy-crawlies, you might want to avoid Lake Tawakoni State Park, where a 200-yard stretch along a nature trail has been blanketed by a sprawling spider web that has engulfed seven large trees, dozens of bushes and even the weedy ground.
But if you hate mosquitoes, you might just love this bizarre web.
“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said park Superintendent Donna Garde. “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.” …
The article was, of course, talking about the web at Lake Tawakoni State Park.
Later that day I received a photo that a Star-Telegram photographer took of a spider in the web:
Reprint Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
This is obviously a long-jawed orbweaver (family Tetragnathidae). Long-jawed spiders make orb webs, the kind that Charlotte made in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web—you know, the kind with the spokes and spiral. You can see the web in this photo, and you can see that it is not in an orb web.
Now I was intrigued.
And thanks to the Star-Telegram article, the world was going crazy with spider mania. Google News reported 290 stories around the world about the web at Lake Tawakoni. The story was being reported in Europe, Australia, and even China. Two days later, it was even the lead story in the Nation section of the New York Times and was the #1 emailed story on their web site.
