Spider Eats Bird: Golden Orb Spider

In some of the weirdest and freakiest news I've heard this month, there's actually video evidence of a golden orb weaver spider that caught a bird in its web.

Just one more reason I am never ever going to Australia.

A little education can be a dangerous thing. It just took one Oceanography class for me to experience a shiver of trepidation at the beach. Do you know what could be in that water?

Australia's worse than the ocean because they've got more poisonous creatures per square inch. I'm surprised Steve Irwin lived as long as he did.

Even if someone does manage to drug me, put me on a plane and take to me a land where spiders are as big as dinner plates, I will wake up before they decide swimming near the Great Barrier Reef is good idea.

Because when you put the ocean and the coast of Australia next to each other, you get creatures like the blue ringed octopus. It's actually kinda cute, highly decorative and about the size of golf ball. You'd never know that it can kill you with death!

And also poison.

Look on any list of THE WORLD's MOST POISONOUS CREATURES and you'll find that most of them reside in Australia. The Sydney funnel spider, the box jelly fish and the stone fish can all kill a grown human. You'll notice that there are more sea creatures on the list than anything

But let's get back to the spider at hand. Namely the freak of nature spider that built a web strong enough to catch a bird. That's right. The bird was flying along minding its own business when BLAM, it was caught in a spider's web. That's what it gets for visiting Australia.

The images were taken by Joel Shakespeare, head spider keeper at the Australian Reptile Park. I'm glad Mr. Shakespeare is around, because who knows what those spiders would do if he wasn't.

In what was meant to be a comforting statement, Shakespeare pointed out that "It wouldn't eat the whole bird."

This is why we love the Australian people. An American would have found a shotgun and killed the spider, after a healthy dose of screaming. My husband goes after spiders with swords, and they are much smaller than the golden orb weaver.

But Aussies are a different sort. I suppose all the ones that startle were eliminated from the gene pool hundreds of years ago.

So, though I love the Australian people, I will not be visiting their fine country. At least not without some kind of heavy sedation. Because at some point, scientists are eventually going to find a tribe of koalas whose bite can kill you instantly.