Spiders have taken over parts of Hawke's Bay this week - their giant silk webs blanketing public parks, gardens and fields.
It's a phenomenon known as 'ballooning' and it could be caused by recent flooding in the region.
A Napier park was only covered in grass clippings on Friday, but on Wednesday it was coated in a giant web of spider silk.
"When I actually had a look over the whole grass, I was like OMG it is absolutely covered," Napier resident Sandy Eddy says.
And so were the legs and shoes of people who tried to walk through it.
It wasn't just Napier covered in spider webs, photos taken 20 minutes away in Puketapu show silk spider webs engulfing Darren Walker's paddock, garden and pool fence.
"I didn't know what to think, I was actually looking for some great big tarantulas running up my lawn but never saw any spiders at all - it was bizarre," Puketapu resident Darren Walker says.
Bizzare but completely natural, it's a behaviour called "ballooning" that many spider species exhibits.
The spider climbs off the ground to release silk into the air.
"They'll point their rear end skywards, that's where the spinnerets are, and they'll play out silk - and the breeze will carry it aloft," Te Papa spider expert Phil Sirvid says.
Spiders use ballooning to move to a new habitat or to escape danger.
Sirvid believes recent flooding in Hawke's Bay could be the cause.
"In flood situations, they may use it to escape from the rising waters, the end result is you end up with masses of silk strands all over the vegetation," Sirvid says.
It's something that's puzzled people this week and had them looking twice.
"I thought it was a frost, but no got a bit closer and the whole ground the paddocks everything just coated in cobwebs," Walker says.
"I've never seen anything like that and I've worked here 15 years," Eddy says.
Spiders can even 'balloon' between countries.
"We even have spiders that disperse here from Australia using it, if they get in the right air system they can go Trans-Tasman," Sirvid says. "It's a natural marvel of nature."
A marvel that only hung around in Napier for a couple of days.
