2020 has had its share of terrifying invasive species. First there was the “murder hornet,” a giant species of hornet that made its way to America from Japan. Just this month, authorities announced they are desperately trying to find nests before the hornets entered their “slaughter phase” and killed any honeybee in sight by decapitation. Also this month, there are reports of people cultivating black soldier flies to eat human trash and cut down on methane emissions. The flies are being bred to be voracious consumers of any organic material—including flesh.
With everything in the news from the election to the pandemic, these terrifying bugs have largely flown under the radar, so to speak.
Another horrifying species has made its way to New Jersey, but the local news media has yet to report on this troubling development. The Australian Leaping Spider is a highly aggressive and venomous arachnid known to climb trees and leap down on its prey from above. Highly venomous, the spider has terrified farmers and indigenous people of the Australian wilderness for centuries. If the spider is desperate or hungry enough, it will attack livestock such as cattle or sheep, and in rare cases, even humans.
This was a relatively benign threat in the sparsely populated Outback, and the spiders have actually been helpful in some cases in Australia by attacking scavengers like hyenas, but scientists have feared what may happen if the spiders make it to a more densely populated area, such as the East Coast of the U.S.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is currently investigating reports of the spider in this area. Please approach this cache with extreme caution. You may want to keep an eye on some of the branches above you just in case.
This cache is part of the Socially Distanced Halloween series. A number is listed on the log sheet that will allow you to find the bonus mystery cache, The Mysterious Outbreak of 1720. This cache only has room for a log, so BYOP.
The rest of the series is here: