I saw the spiders marching through the air,
Swimming from tree to tree, that mildewed day
In latter August when the hay
Came creaking to the barn. But where
The wind is westerly
Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly
Into the apparitions of the sky,
They purpose nothing but their ease and die
Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea.
"Dr. Jerome Rovner, one of the world's leading arachnologists (authorities on spiders), told Journey North, "Ballooning spiders indeed make up a large component of the aerial plankton. Darwin noted a mass landing of spiders on THE BEAGLE when 200 miles off the coast of South America. About 15 or so years ago, some Californians panicked at the sight of mysterious--and probably alien!--material falling from the sky (the silk threads of a major spider ballooning event)."
"One entomologist, Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer, calculated that during daylight in May, a volume of air 1 mile square extending from 20 feet above the ground to an altitude of 500 feet contained 32 million arthropods! He wrote that "This amounts to 6 arthropods per 10 cubic yards of air. Ten cubic yards is quite a small space, about the size of a small clothes closet."