SHANE BROWN: Joro spiders? I'll be out buying cases of Raid (2024)

I promise you it isn't my goal to turn this column into your new home for all things small and icky, but the hits keep coming.

A couple weeks ago, I told the tale of my backyard being invaded by a swarm of honeybees, which was pretty much my worst nightmare come to life. Last week, I mentioned how an aimless country drive took us straight into the heart of the great cicada uprising of 2024. For someone who hates bugs and insects and all manner of creepy-crawlies, I've certainly been devoting a lot of column inches to them.

I had plans to take things in a different direction this week, I swear. This one wasn't my fault. I blame TMZ.

People give TMZ a lot of grief. They are, after all, the "news" outlet that hangs outside of airports and restaurants in hopes of ambushing whatever celebrity might attempt to exist within their proximity. There's nothing quite as cringy as watching paparazzi painfully trying to get sound bites from famous people by hurling inane questions at them. "J-Lo!" they'll scream in desperation. "Where's your wedding ring? Why did you cancel your tour? What do you think about the Trump verdict? How should we solve the crisis in Gaza?"

Paparazzi are the scum that live between the toes of other pond scum. I feel terrible for celebrities when they're hounded by paparazzi everywhere they go. People give Taylor Swift occasional grief for being so omnipresent, but can you imagine, even for a split second, living her life? She's literally a prisoner of her own fame. Taylor Swift can't step one foot outside her house (whichever of her many houses she happens to be in) without an onslaught of flashbulbs and idiots yelling inane stuff. It's truly a miracle she hasn't built an amusem*nt park in her backyard, and tried to buy the elephant man's bones at this point.

TMZ are terrible - but so, apparently, am I. As much as I despise the culture they perpetuate, I'm JUST shallow and vapid enough to obsess over the culture they cover. The TMZ app sits on my phone right next to CNN's like it's a major news source. I hate TMZ, yet there's a part of me that will always root for them. Whenever they get the jump on "real" news networks and scoop some breaking news, I can't help but cheer for the underdog, even if this particular underdog is covered in slime.

But most of the time, TMZ's breaking news bulletins are nothing but sensationalistic twaddle - which brings me to their alert I just got on my phone:

"GIANT VENOMOUS FLYING SPIDERS INVADING ANY DAY NOW."

Welp, there's one I didn't have on my bingo card.

Honestly, though, given the decade we're living in, it kinda tracks, right? We've survived a global pandemic, an insurrection, Korean boybands, and whatever Jojo Siwa's turned into. I suppose it's simply high time we added giant venomous flying spiders to the list.

It's actually kind of horrifying. A few years, some Asian Joro spiders must've hitched a ride on some shipping containers, landed on our shores, and set up shop down in Georgia back in 2010. Since then, the invasive arachnids have begun spreading across the United States. If you haven't seen a Joro spider, they can grow to the size of a human hand and have leg spans of four inches. Their webs are massive and sticky. And if that's not gross enough, when Joro spiders feel like relocating, they weave their webs into the shape of balloons and just go paragliding in the summer breeze until they presumably fly directly into my face and test the efficacy of my heart medicine. Fun times.

The GOOD news is that TMZ is over-hyping and click baiting the headline somewhat. While Joro spiders are indeed starting to colonize our continent, they're still a ways away from the Midwest. They're currently making their way up the east coast and even into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They're likely coming our way, but not for a bit. And while these spiders ARE venomous, they usually prefer sinking their tiny teeth into other insects and NOT people. I just read an article that said their teeth are so small, they might not even be able to puncture human skin - and if they DID, it would be no worse than a bee sting.

(Note to the general press and mainstream media: When you're trying to minimize the danger of something, don't compare it to a bee sting. Some of us are deathly allergic to bee stings. Just sayin'.)

When it comes to spiders, I generally have a "live and let live" philosophy, unless they're the scary and/or deadly type. If you're a spider and you want to set up shop in a distant corner of my property where you will never bother me and I will never walk into your web, have at it. Enjoy feasting on all the other bugs I hate. But if you decide to move that party INDOORS and encroach on MY turf, I am not responsible for whatever actions myself or a rolled-up newspaper may do. Last week, a spider decided the best place to build a new home would be my bathtub. I may have displaced him to a new home - in Davy Jones' locker.

The other night, my home security alarm started blaring in the middle of the night to let me know there was an intruder on my front porch. That intruder turned out to be a tiny spider trying to build a web directly ON my doorbell camera. When I pulled up the surveillance video, it looked like there was an eight-foot multi-legged monster waiting patiently on the porch to sell me life insurance or something. If you were driving around at 2 a.m. and saw a guy flicking a broom around desperately, it was just me doing some spontaneous 2 a.m. arachnid gentrification.

None of this bodes well for the future, but it's OK, because neither does anything else in the news. Last week, it was cicadas. This week it's flying spiders. Next week, we'll probably have man-eating millipedes free roaming our neighborhoods. But don't worry, when the great millipede invasion takes hold, I'm sure our leaders will come together and figure out a way to blame each other for everything. As for me, I'm putting a moratorium on bug columns for the foreseeable future. If you need me, I'll be out buying cases of Raid.