I love Halloween! Half the fun is decorating outdoors and the other half is scaring the trick-or-treaters. One of my favorite outside decorations is a scary face on the door that is motion-activated. Once or twice it has caused a trick-or-treater to turn around and run. Too funny!
My outside decorations include happy ghost lights, orange string lights, floating ghosts, a scary skeleton, and caution tape. Indoors there are some bloody hands that stick on the window and window screens that when lit from behind look like a haunted house. You can see my decorations here along with some tips on keeping your gardens safe from over-excited trick-or-treaters.
A few years ago, I included fake spider webbing in my arbor, stringing it up with several sets of lights. It looked great, but I soon discovered a big problem.
October still has mild weather here in Mississippi. That means many of my plants are still blooming, attracting bees and butterflies. In addition, the migration of hummingbirds is still ongoing, with birds flying in and around my plants and vines.
Fake Spider Webs Can Kill Birds, Bees, and Hummingbirds
As I was leaving the front door, I discovered a bumblebee had been caught in the fake spider webbing that I had hung up as decoration. I tried to release him, but he struggled even more and became more entangled.
After a good 25 minutes of trying to get him free, I finally decided I had to try to cut him out. With a struggling bee in constant motion, it was quite a challenge. I got him free, but he still had a little webbing on his legs. Finally he cleaned himself off pretty well and took off flying.
But I learned a valuable lesson from this – Fake spider webs are just as dangerous as the real stuff when put outdoors. Keep it as inside decoration. I am sure that a hummingbird could just have easily been caught in the webbing. I would have been devastated if my Halloween decorations had caused a bird to be injured or killed.
After seeing some of this webbing being placed outside at some of the houses in my neighborhood, I thought back to my experience with the bee and decided to Google to see if others had similar problems.
Can you believe I came across an article about a screech owl getting stuck in fake spider webs? It took a call to the Humane Society who worked on cutting it free to get it released.
So, please be safe and restrict the use of fake spider webs to indoor use (and keep it high where your indoor pets can’t get to it).
Check out this flyer produced by WildCare – you can see the owl stuck in the webbing! Yikes!
