An Arachnophobe's Nightmare...

This report from Wired is seriously high in the "Yuck!" factor. I'm not an arachnophobe, but, in addition to preferring spiders to be outside of my living space, I also prefer spiders to be out of sight and out of mind.

The flooding in Pakistan last year led the country's spider population to take refuge in the trees. Millions of spiders. And, with the flood waters taking rather a long time to go down, the spiders made themselves at home. A while back, I posted a photo or two of a spider in the church here which had managed to build itself a web from the church roof down to the pew in just a few hours. Imagine what millions of the blighters can do over a few months...

Ok, don't imagine. Here's what they actually did...

There is a silver lining in this cloud: the number of malaria-spreading mosquitos is much lower than usual, especially given the larger amount of stagnant water around.