Untangling A Giant Web Mystery

What creature draped these trees in silk?

- Tracy Vonder Brink

White sheets of webbing blanketed tall oak trees along the shoreline at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas. Webbing drooped from tree to tree, wrapped branches in cocoons, and formed canopies overhead. The air hummed with the whine of mosquitoes and tiny insects called midges that were trapped in the web’s sticky strands.

“I knew when I saw the web that this was something very unusual and amazing,” said park superintendent Donna Garde. She grabbed her camera.

Soon, her photos were on TV, on Web sites, and in newspapers. She sent images to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Scientists there had never seen such an enormous web in the United States. They e-mailed the photos to entomologists (scientists who study insects) and to arachnologists (scientists who study spiders).

Some thought caterpillars had made the web.