Blanket of spiders follows mouse plague in Australian town hit by flooding
"Absolutely beautiful but also completely terrifying" - the town blanketed in cobwebs
A town in south-east Australia has found itself blanketed in spider webs after wild weather hit the area.
Traralgon in eastern Victoria has been swamped by vast, other worldly sheets of web as spiders climb to higher ground following the disruption of heavy rain.
It's the latest plague to hit the area, after mice rampaged through parts of the state, again linked to extreme weather.
Enthusiasts shared images of the eight-legged invasion on a Facebook page dedicated to identifying spiders in Australia.
One follower described the scene as "absolutely beautiful but also completely terrifying".
Another said the spiders must be "working together to create something like this."
Dr Walker, senior insects curator at Museums Victoria, told local press the spiders use their silk like a grappling hook to hoist themselves out of the way of floodwaters.
“Ground-dwelling spiders need to get off the ground very quickly. The silk snakes up and catches onto vegetation and they can escape," he told The Age.
“It also shows the literally tens of thousands, if not millions, of spiders at ground level. Without spiders, we’d have plagues of insects.”
The 45-year-old, who has lived in Sale for 10 years, said he had never seen anything like it.
“I didn’t know what to think when I first saw it. It was like a freak of nature.”