Welcome to the Mid-Atlantic!

While my sausage and hominy sizzle in the pan, I get to watch the morning TV shows - CBS Mornings, Today, Good Morning America, and the upstart News Nation on WGN. 

All those shows have some features of their own, and they all have some things in common. If there is bad weather coming, they don't say "bad weather is coming." They give up the straight telling of the story for "Killer storm marauding across the heartland!"

Any disappearance is "bizarre," fires are "blazes" that "roar through buildings," and security is always something that needs to be "beefed up." 

No matter how unlikely it is that any of us will have a Joro spider land on us, still, you know the morning shows will tell us that the nation is "bracing" for an "invasion" of these large spiders from East Asia.

They've been spotted regularly in Georgia and other points southeast of here. But now "top scientists" will warn of a northern migration.

They will probably have an entomologist (not that they would use the real name for a "bug expert)  or two come on the shows with joros so that one or two of the anchors can hold a spider in their meaty hand and one or two others will run and flee for higher ground, hiding behind Michael Strahan.

But just like 2021's chief bug annoyance, the 17-year cicada, Joro spiders are harmless to humans, and unlike cicadas, they even do some good.

"People should try to learn to live with them," Andy Davis, a research scientist in the Odum School of Ecology and one of the authors behind a recent study, told UGA Today, a publication by the University of Georgia. He says that the joros had been hanging around the southeastern states but felt unwelcome because of Ron DeSantis, so they are moving up north to form new colonies here. And it is believed that these larger arachnids have a better chance of withstanding a brief cold snap, because they ordered down-filled pajamas from LL Bean last fall.

Interesting: they get their name from Jorōgumo, from a character in Japanese folklore that can turn itself into a beautiful woman to prey on unsuspecting men.

Also interesting: All men are unsuspecting, only in different areas.

And Davis says not to worry about them, even though they are somewhat startling in appearance. They don't eat crops and they do provide food for local birds who are tired of carryout night after night. And even though they kill for their own food and use their venom to do it, they don't bite humans or pets because their fangs are too small to pierce our skin.

So don't worry if you see them in your neighborhood. With any luck, you might get to meet Ginger Zee.