While some inland portions of Australia are being overrun by millions of rodents, residents closer to the coast are getting hit with heavy rains and flooding ― and that’s led to a deluge of spiders and snakes looking to escape the rising waters.
“It’s still raining here and the flood water is still rising, the water is getting closer to our home,” Matt Lovenfosse of Kinchela Creek told CNN. “In the morning it should be inside and the spiders will be all over the house.”
If spiders all over the house sounds unsettling, you might not want to even come near the trees.
“The trees are full of snakes,” he said.
And maybe avoid boats, too.
“If you take the boat out over the paddock, they swim towards it trying to get on something dry,” he said. “Same with the spiders.”
“There were also skinks, ants, basically every insect, crickets ― all just trying to get away from the flood waters,” Shenae Varley told The Guardian Australia after a visit to Penrith weir in western Sydney.
“My husband videoed it, because I was not going close to it,” she added. “When he was standing still, he had spiders climbing up his legs. A skink used him as a pole to get away from the water.”
One expert told ABC Australia that the insect population hasn’t increased.
Rather, they’ve always been there.
“All this is happening under our noses, but we just don’t know what’s going on,” professor Dieter Hochuli of Sydney University told the network. “What happens with the floods is all these animals that spend their lives cryptically on the ground can’t live there anymore.”
The floods have led to thousands of evacuations, especially in coastal regions, amid record-breaking rains.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he expected the rains to let up by Wednesday but warned that flooding would remain a threat, even away from the coast, as dams struggle with surging water levels.
No deaths have been reported.
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