9 Georgia Backyard Creatures That Startle Newcomers (and 2 That Should)

A snake in the pine straw rears up, flares its neck flat, and hisses at the guy who just moved down to Georgia from Chicago.

Then it flips onto its back, goes limp, and plays dead in the flower bed.

These are the creatures that make Georgia newcomers jump, plus the two that have every right to.

1. Webs Across the Whole Yard

The Joro spider strings a web as wide as a car between two Georgia porch posts, and the whole thing shines gold in the morning sun.

The spider sitting in the middle is huge, bright yellow and blue, and new to the neighborhood.

It arrived around Atlanta in 2013, hitched in on shipping containers from East Asia.

Newcomers see the size and assume the worst.

They shouldn’t.

University of Georgia (UGA) researchers put these spiders through stress tests and found the Joro may be the shyest spider ever studied, freezing in place for over an hour when startled.

Its fangs can barely break human skin.

It would rather be still than fight.

2. Grasshopper That Can’t Fly

Georgians call the eastern lubber the Georgia thumper, and once you’ve met a lubber, the name fits.

It parks itself in the middle of the driveway, fat and slow, painted in yellow, black, and red.

The biggest females stretch three inches long.

A bug that size should bolt when a shoe comes near.

The lubber won’t. It can’t fly.

Its wings are too short to lift it, so it sits there daring you to bother it.

That nerve is chemical because a crowded lubber hisses, then oozes a foul foam that makes birds and pets spit it right back out.

3. Wasp That Ignores You

Few things clear a Georgia deck faster than a cicada killer hovering at eye level.

The wasp runs two inches long, striped yellow and black, and looks built to send someone to the hospital.

It isn’t.

Cicada killers are loners, not colony insects, so there’s no nest of guards looking to defend it.

The female spends August dragging paralyzed cicadas into a burrow, and she stings only if you grab her.

The big cicada killer dive-bombing your head is usually a male guarding his patch of lawn, and he has no stinger at all.

As a University of Georgia entomologist put it, these giants pose no threat to people.

4. Snake That Fakes Death

The eastern hognose snake is Georgia’s finest actor, and its whole routine is built to fool you.

Step too close and it rears up, spreads its neck into a wide hood, and hisses like a cobra.

People call it a puff adder and panic.

Pure theater.

The hognose is nonvenomous, and the cobra act is a bluff it can’t back up.

When the hiss fails, it changes tactics completely.

It rolls onto its back, gapes its mouth open, lets its tongue loll out, and plays dead in the grass until you walk away.

5. Dive-Bombers on the Porch

Every Georgia spring, carpenter bees turn the front porch into a runway.

A big black-and-yellow bee hovers inches from your nose, darts sideways, and swings right back.

It looks like a bumblebee spoiling for a fight.

Here’s the twist:

That bee is a male, and the male carpenter bee has no stinger.

All bluff, no sting.

The female can sting, but she saves it for anyone who grabs her or steps on her barefoot.

That shiny black patch on his back is how you know he isn’t a bumblebee at all.

6. Fifty Teeth, Zero Threat

The Virginia opossum looks like a giant rat that lost a fight, and Georgia newcomers rarely want it near the trash cans.

Open the lid after dark and it freezes, bares 50 teeth, and hisses.

Terrifying.

It's also one of the most useful animals in your yard.

Opossums eat ticks, roaches, snails, mice, and venomous snakes, and they almost never carry rabies.

They're the only marsupial in North America, and they carry their young in a belly pouch.

Even the famous death act isn't a choice because a cornered opossum faints and goes stiff for minutes until the threat loses interest.

7. Lizard With an Orange Head

A foot-long lizard with a swollen, bright-orange head clinging to the side of a Georgia oak stops transplants cold.

That's a male broadhead skink in breeding season, and it's the largest lizard native to the Southeast.

A big male reaches 13 inches, most of it muscle and jaw.

The orange head looks like a warning.

It's a love letter.

Males color up in spring to win mates, not to pick fights, and the flush fades by summer.

Corner the skink and it doesn't lunge; it runs straight up the nearest tree trunk and vanishes into the canopy.

8. Armored Lawn Digger

Few sights say Georgia has changed like an armadillo rooting up a lawn at dusk.

The animal looks prehistoric, a possum wrapped in armor plating, and it wasn't here a lifetime ago.

Armadillos pushed east out of Texas and now dig as far north as Athens and Rome.

They wreck yards hunting grubs, punching shallow cone-shaped holes all over the grass.

Annoying, yes. Dangerous, no.

They've got terrible eyesight, so a startled armadillo launches straight up like a bucking horse before it sprints off.

You may have heard they carry leprosy, but people almost never catch it, and the rare cases trace back to handling or eating an armadillo.

9. Green Moth That Never Eats

On a summer night, a pale green moth the size of your palm lands on a Georgia window screen and just sits there.

The luna moth is one of the largest moths in North America, with a wingspan near four inches and long tails trailing off each hindwing.

It glows almost mint-green under the porch light.

And it's dying.

The adult luna moth has no mouth, can't eat, and runs entirely on fat it stored as a caterpillar.

It lives about a week, long enough to mate and nothing more.

So the giant green moth on your screen has almost no time left, and no interest in you at all.

The Two That Earn It

These next two Georgia backyard creatures aren't putting on an act, and either can land you in an urgent care.

Copperheads in the Leaf Litter

The copperhead is the creature Georgia newcomers should have been nervous about the whole time.

It's venomous, it's common in yards, and it accounts for most bites the state's poison center treats each year.

You rarely see it coming.

A copperhead lies still in the pine straw, wrapped in tan hourglass bands that disappear against dead leaves.

Most Georgia copperhead bites happen when someone steps on a copperhead they never saw, reaching into mulch or walking a wood line barefoot.

Here's the good news: A copperhead bite is rarely fatal, and the snake would sooner freeze than strike.

Respect it anyway, watch where you put your hands and feet from spring through fall, and give any coppery-headed snake in the yard a wide berth.

Fire Ants Underfoot

Step on the wrong grassy mound in a Georgia yard, and you learn about fire ants the hard way.

Red imported fire ants build dome mounds out in the open sun, and there's no warning at all.

Disturb a mound, and hundreds pour out and race up your shoes to sting.

They don't just bite. They sting again and again, pumping venom that raises a ring of white blisters by the next day.

It burns.