What in the world are these strange string-like things all over my neighborhood? (details inside)

That is some pretty weird shit…

Did you see any caterpillars out and about?

@Adirondackwannabe no. I really can’t fathom this being from bugs… unless they can fly several blocks and attach these web-string-things. That’s the most baffling part, they seem to be ATTACHED at the other end, but they are so long and so high up that you can’t really tell where.
And to tie a 10’ piece of something off of one (it looks TIED on) and to blow in the wind all day and not break?

I’m stumped. And a little unnerved. It’s very weird.

I have to be honest, I was starting to envision spiders the size of baseballs. With wings.

Do you live in Roswell, NM?
Seriously, if you could take a picture it would help.

@chyna I took two photos, but you can barely see anything. I will post them, but I do think they’re sort of useless. One second, let me upload them somewhere.

@DigitalBlue That was my second guess. Spiders travel that way. They both ride the wind currents on strands of silk.

@Adirondackwannabe that seems.. sort of logical, but how tough are these strands of silk? I mean, I’m talking about being able to see these things 50+ feet off the ground, and they are holding up to strong winds. Is that possible? Can they support a foreign object being attached and blowing in the wind for 6+ hours?

@DigitalBlue The silk ounce for ounce (if you can get that much) is stronger than steel.

is it not obvious?

@Adirondackwannabe so, I should be attempting to collect this stuff? Should I be preparing for spiders the size of baseballs? If I could take a picture of the strand hanging down by the telephone pole tomorrow, I will. It appears very thick.

In this picture you can see two of them reflecting the sun. I made an X where they sort of intersect, and drew an arrow to each string’s reflection.

In this picture you can see the streamer thing floating in the sky.

@ragingloli that was the running joke of the day at my house.

I would move out of the state if it were spiders the size of baseballs.
They must connect to something, right? They’re not floating on their own or anything, are they?

@dxs no, I don’t think that they are floating on their own, but they seriously go for blocks and are nearly transparent, so it’s really hard to find where any of them are connected. Several seem to just shoot straight up into the sky. If it were not so apparent that they don’t seem obviously connected to anything, I don’t think they would be nearly as interesting. At least one that I was able to find and follow (the one with the ribbon hanging on it) spans at least 3 blocks. Maybe longer.

I don’t think that is spider webs.

@chyna me either. But I really don’t know what they are, and I’m a little bit freaked out.

Maybe it’s a practical joke. You could try asking someone from the city.

I can’t even think of a way that someone/something could get them 60 feet up in the air without anyone noticing. It almost has to be a natural phenomenon, right?
Or aliens.

It’s spiderman!

Or Spiderman. Definitely considered that possibility, too.

That looks too large to be silk, unless you’ve got some monster bugs. I’d suggest fleeing the neighborhood. Spider or caterpillar silk is usually very fine. But they can go along way if the wind patterns are favorable.

That’s what I was afraid of.

The strings are probably made of spider silk. To be specific, it is called “ballooning,” and it is when many hundreds of baby spiders create silk strands that enable them to float through the air and disperse.

Check out this link. The image at the very bottom of the page looks very similar to your photos.

The reason that the strings look thick is because the many hundreds of tiny strands often get tangled with each other, and they also get stuck on various things.

That does look like your pictures. I think you can stay at the house. Unless spiders creep you out.:)

Ugh

I’d say it’s ballooning too. Another image

Hey spiders are people too.

No they aren’t. They are evil, spooky monsters.

@chyna Oh you live down where they play banjos a lot.

Eeek….......................

Be Brave…....................

It’s the only way

It’s raining spiders. Eek!

These dudes were seriously organized.

My first thought was spider silk as well. I’m so glad I don’t have those floating around here.

Thanks for helping, Fluther.
Going to stay in my house with a can of Raid for the rest of the summer.

Stop hating on the Spiderbros

It’s not spiders.
A piece broke down in one of the big trees today, and my husband grabbed and and was collecting it and it seems to be attached to a big tree 2 blocks over.
It’s like heavy duty nylon line.

Can you see how it is attached to the tree? Is it tied in a knot or is it attached with some type of fastener? Since it seems like nylon, rather than a spider web, that might help us figure out how it got there. I wonder if it’s some kind of junk that could have fallen out of a plane? Or part of a parachute or weather balloon that came apart and floated down to your neighborhood.

Now that you have a piece of it, can you take a close up photo of that?

I love this question. It’s such a mystery!

Not all spider silk is sticky.

Who could you call who might know the answer to this question? Do you have a scientific institute over there? We have the CSIRO. They’d probably have someone who could answer such a question here.

This is what we pulled down out of the tree.

So weird!

Wow. That’s actually quite stupid, to be honest. Why would anybody coat the neighborhood in nylon line?

That seems unsafe too. Odd.

It’s extremely bizarre. At least spiders/something natural made sense. This makes no sense.

Have you had high winds recently? Maybe a spool of…whatever that is…got blown around.

We’ve had some windy days. Nothing crazy, but we’ve had wind.
My new theories now that I know what it’s made of are:

A really determined rogue kite.
Birds trying to take it to nests.
Aliens.

@PhiNotPi and I have a new theory: ALIEN SPIDERS. Radioactive, man-eating, alien spiders.

Or a deranged fisherman.

Oh, also, @Kardamom no. I can’t find where any of it is attached. It’s going in every direction, so far I’ve found it across about 6 blocks going N/S and 3 or 4 going E/W. Give or take. Its hard to spot, but I went all over looking for it yesterday.
It’s too high up to really see how it is attached. There is a broken piece tangled in my telephone line by the house, but it just looks tangled, I can’t tell if it’s tied.

The Attack of the Man-Eating Radioactive Super Spiders from Outer Space!

It sounds like a low-budget class B horror movie.

Radioactive man-eating alien fisherman spiders.

Maybe they are Jesus spiders…“And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’”

I really hate mysteries when they can’t be solved. Not understanding something makes me bonkers.

Here’s a thought. Since they just had that huge tornado in Oklahoma, even if you don’t live anywhere near that town or state, a lot of stuff may have been drawn way up high into the atmosphere and scattered for hundreds of miles before it fell back to earth. It may be just remnants of a spool of fishing wire from a hardware store that got destroyed in the storm.

Take this story to your local news station and let them research it.

@Kardamom I like your theory, but I saw this a couple of months ago while out for a walk. I just noticed more really recently. But maybe something along those lines is still possible.

I consider the tornado hypothesis to be extremely unlikely. Stuff sucked up by tornadoes will probably travel a few miles, maximum.

Even more photos could be useful. Show us all the photos that you have.

Could it be a prank?

@DigitalBlue That’s fishing line. I’m guessing some freak event from the storms and tornados. They can carry stuff a long way, especially light stuff like that. On the plus side you don’t need the Raid.

I don’t think a prank is very likely. Honestly, some of these trees are massive. There’s no way someone could have put this stuff for several blocks without some way to get up there – and I can’t see how no one would have noticed them doing it, plus, at least some of it is across one of the main streets with reasonably heavy traffic. Most of the neighbors are equally baffled.

@Adirondackwannabe I agree that it is fishing line.
However, we haven’t had any major storms in this area in the last few months, nor have we had several that might explain how more of the line suddenly appeared yesterday.

Is a kite totally impossible? Do kites use line similar to fishing line (I can’t remember)? How much line comes on a spool with a standard kite?

Kites sometimes do use line similar to fishing line. The length could be several hundred feet.

I’m pathetic with math. Is several hundred feet enough to criss cross over 6+ city blocks several times? Maybe it’s multiple kites.

I’m guessing it’s from the Moore tornado. The line probably ended up in the ultra high altitudes and carried all the way to your state. We had a F1 tornado a few years ago that took out a radio station. Tapes were found miles away. Fishing line would be easy compared to that. That’s not kite sting.

@DigitalBlue Probably not. Each city block by itself is several hundred feet long. (source)

@Adirondackwannabe it sounds good in theory, but I have been seeing these lines since long before the Moore tornado, we just have more than there were a few weeks ago. That’s my problem with it as a possibility.

@DigitalBlue In what city do you live?

I PMed.

@DigitalBlue They appeared before the tornado? When did it start? And keep the Raid handy.

@Adirondackwannabe I noticed them a long while ago, I want to say like the end of March. Just a couple, while I was walking with my neighbor. After that, I’ve been sort of semi-watching for them, just because it struck me as bizarre then.

I always watch the sky when I’m outside and I have a tendency to trip over things because I’m always looking up. I was on my front steps yesterday when I noticed the ones that I posted pictures of here. A little while later I noticed the streamer or bit of fabric or whatever that is, floating on the next street, while I was sitting on my patio.

Then I got dressed and went for a walk and found more (I also walk regularly, and I’ve seen them here and there, but there suddenly seem to be a LOT more.)

This is so bizarre. March is too cool for insects, unless it was really warm this year. Are there any factories nearby producing fishing line, anything related, or fabrics?

Nope.

Looks like this mystery will remain unsolved. :(

@DigitalBlue Are you near a nuclear reactor? I’m thinking radioactive spiders or aliens.

~Maybe it’s the manifestation of all of the dreams that people ask about on Fluther. That’s where the dreams end up, in the trees and wrapped around the telephone poles.

It only appears as fishing wire to you and me, but that’s because the dreams have to look like something that is recognizable to us in our waking life. We would not be able to perceive the dreams in their natural state.~

@Kardamom I think you just nailed it!

If I follow them will it tell me the meaning of the dream I had about this guy I like? Will it tell me if he likes me back?~

You need to shake your magic eight ball four times, then dance naked in the moonlight, and make a pledge to a god or goddess of your choice.

~Yes, it will tell you specifically that the guy you like, likes you back and that he thinks you are super foxy and that he wants you to have is children and go to the prom with you~

In the meantime, you should try to contact your local weather persons and let them know what you have found. I still think that the line has been floating around in the atmosphere, maybe for months, from the last big storm (if not from the most recent storm in Moore). I expect that light weight items, such as fishing line, could easily be floating around the atmosphere, if sucked up by a previous tornado/hurricane, like the one in 2013, and simply not set down until the atmospheric conditions were right to set them down.

After you call the local radio or TV station, please let us know what they say. Fascinating.

I really don’t intend to call anyone, sorry.

Can the “fishing line” break or is it flimsy? Can you stretch it ? If it were me, I’d show the neighbors and all my family members if they’re close to you.

Have you talked to people in your area about it? Maybe they know.

Neighbors. They have no idea.

dammit I want to know what it is!

This just reminded me of this question. “Nancy Drew this bitch.” Good times.

Has it been solved yet?

Nope. We have more. We tear them down when we can reach them or when they fall, but they continue to reappear.
There was another orange streamer that appeared, also, right over my house. Disappeared the next day. That was about a week ago, maybe a little longer.