The Joro Spider as the Perfect Immigrant

The Joro Spider Has Travelled Far

Everything an immigrant is, the Joro spider is. All that we consider our national character, the spider demonstrates. As I’m American and it came to America, I’ll look at it through American eyes.

The Joro spider — an introduced species (as opposed to invasive) has traveled thousands of miles to these shores with nothing but a possibility of building a future. The Joro came from Japan to north Georgia, USA. We Americans, in fact, imported them unknowingly. That’s quite a trip.

It travelled all across the world to come to a land already full of life. It proved itself resilient, building webs which are tough. It is adaptable, building webs high and low. Their webs are beautiful, shimmering like gold thread in the setting sun.

These immigrants have traveled tough, and they are hardy. They are builders.

Look at their webs. See how they dance in the wind, but they don’t fall? See how they are buttressed on all sides? You see the outer web and you see that it is ragged. It is the shape of innovation. You get inside what seems like chaos, and you see the intricate structures, the orb which spokes like a bicycle wheel.

You will find them in the forests, and you will find them by the roadside. They’re in your gardens and in your trees. They’re high up where the power lines touch the sky, and they are low, where your stairs meet your deck.

They eat only what comes their way, sometimes calling lunch things which disgust us. It’s a capitalist and yet, it shares.

If the rain is hard and they should be knocked off their golden threads, they climb back up again. If a broom takes them down, and releases the web from its foundation, they build another.

They are individuals. The gold and black and red are all set in different patterns, though each is clearly a Joro. Each is unique, but you see several in a collection of webs stay together, until their children float as spiderlings to the next new home.

The Joro spider is a true immigrant. We’re afraid of it and we admire it. We respect it. All of us come from immigrants, strangers to a strange land, but wherever we are, like the Joro, we make it home.