Sam Venable 

Department of Irony

I am trying to keep an open mind about Joro spiders, those giant creepy crawlies that come floating down out of the blue at any moment and land on…Aaaaieee! Look out! Somebody roll up a newspaper and start swatting!”

(Just kidding. About rolling up a newspaper, I mean. Honest-to-gosh newspapers are quite rare in households these days. I should have said something like, “Grab a phone book and start…” Oh, wait; no phone books either. But you catch my drift.)

By now you’ve surely heard of Joro spiders — or “parachute” spiders as they’re sometimes called. The nickname comes from the fact they extend long, billowy silk threads. They spread by “ballooning” on breezes and get deposited wherever and whenever the wind dies down.

Joro spiders have been spreading a lot in the southern U.S. since 2013, when they were first discovered in Georgia. Ever since, they’ve been documented in South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Scientists say it’s just a matter of time before they’ll be found throughout the East.

Based on photos I’ve seen, Joro spiders are easy on the eye. They’re bright yellow, with iridescent blotches of red and blue.

But it’s not their color you’ll notice. It’s their size. These things are huge — about the size of the palm of a human hand.

Be still my fluttering heart.

But at least they don’t seem to be a threat to people. Despite their enormity, they have tiny choppers that would have a difficult time piercing human skin. 

They’re natives of Japan. Researchers assume they hitched the same ride as murder hornets, emerald ash borers, spotted lantern flies and countless other invasive species: aboard cargo ships from afar. 

I must confess a biological prejudice. Of all members in the animal kingdom, arachnids are my least favorite. This bias is likely due to the fact that ticks — or “$%@#*!” ticks, as I prefer to call them — are of the same ilk.

The only exceptions to my arachnid aversion are writing spiders. It wouldn’t be August in East Tennessee if the morning countryside wasn’t decorated with their intricate webs, glistening with dew. Of course, dew-dropped webs are visible and easily sidestepped. When I get a face full of invisible webbing on non-dew mornings, the “$%@#*!” prefix also applies to writing spiders.

Nonetheless, I’m holding final judgement on Joro spiders. They have one quality that might elevate them to favored-species status.

Their favorite American food is stink bugs.

Any spider, alien or otherwise, that helps reduce the stink bug population can’t be all bad. And if they happen to develop a taste for “$%@#*!” ticks, I say we welcome them with eight open arms.


Sam Venable is an author, comedic entertainer, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. His latest book is “The Joke’s on YOU! (All I Did Was Clean Out My Files).” He may be reached at sam.venable@outlook.com.