So imagine my reaction earlier this week when a flurry of emails lobbed into my inbox asking if I'd seen the video of "rocks dancing in mid-air" filmed last Tuesday near the Air Disaster Memorial at Canberra's Fairbairn Pines.

Rocks can't dance, can they? No, of course they can't. It's against the laws of physics.

Nonetheless, I had a quick squiz at the out-of-the-ordinary footage filmed by Lachlan Moore of Captains Flat, which, in a desperate search of a logical explanation, his partner Lauren Miller had uploaded to the Unexplained Canberra Facebook page.

And sure enough, in the video a small rock, about two-thirds the size of a matchbox, appears to be spinning in mid-air.

But rocks can't dance. So like many others on the page I initially dismissed the footage as some sort of prank perpetrated on Moore or perhaps by Moore himself.

Some punters suggested it was a handy piece of CGI, others politely asked who was holding the fishing line above the rock.

Despite my scepticism, in the interest of keeping an open mind, (or should that be leaving no stone unturned?) I contacted Moore who agreed to show me where he'd filmed the rock

He brings along his mate and fellow security guard Andrew Dowling who is equally as puzzled by the footage and as we walk up the 1.6km dirt track from the locked gate on Pialligo Avenue, Moore explains why he was walking in Fairbairn Pines.

"I've got a military background, I'd always wanted to check out the memorial [where a Lockheed Hudson bomber crashed on August 13, 1940, killing all 10 people on board], so came up to have a stickybeak," he says.

While it was an uneventful stroll up to the memorial where Moore dutifully paid his respects to those killed in the crash, "things got more than a little weird" on the way back to his car.

"Right there in front of me was a rock floating at just below hip height," he gasps.

"At first I didn't take it seriously at all. I thought someone was in the bushes filming, and at any moment they'd come out and say 'gotcha'."

But they didn't. Lachlan then filmed the dancing rock before waving his hand above the rock, hoping to break a fishing line or "invisible" string.

"But there was nothing there, and the rock didn't fall to the ground," he deadpans.

At that point Moore thought "there's a bit more to this" and raced back to his car, stopping only a couple of times to briefly check no one was following him.

Sounds like quite the tale, doesn't it?

Having led many history tours into this forest, I walk ahead showing Moore and Dowling a shortcut to the memorial and before long, we discover the first clue as to the likely cause of the dancing rock. And no, it's not paranormal.

The pine forest is literally crawling with Orb weaver spiders - their ultra-sticky webs string across every tree and every tuft of grass. It's an arachnophobe's worst nightmare. There are spiders in my hat, crawling up my legs, they are everywhere.

So much for my shortcut. I decide to let Moore lead the rest of the way.

Still wiping webs from our faces we eventually reach the spot where Moore had filmed the dancing rock just days earlier. But you guessed it, today there's no floating stones, no dancing rocks. The rocks are sitting motionless on the ground, just as you'd expect rocks to do.

However given the extraordinary number of spider webs, we decide to undertake an impromptu experiment. Moore wraps up a small rock, similar to the size of the one he'd filmed, in part of an orb weaver's web.

He then lets it go. Miraculously, the rock doesn't fall and instead it sways gently in the breeze, entwined in the web.

Ok, so the web is strong enough to hold a small rock, but unless someone happened to undertake the very same experiment just prior to Moore's Tuesday walk, how could a rock end up in the web?

Back in the office, I pose exactly that question to a number of arachnid experts around the country. Most are baffled, but Graham Milledge of the Australian Museum directs me to a website that appears to document the case of a spider (presumably in North America) which had lifted a rock off the ground using its web.

The hypothesis is that the spider had attached its anchor thread to a pebble on the ground and the strain had lifted the pebble off the ground, without necessarily any intention on the part of the spider.

While we can't be 100 per cent certain Moore's footage is the result of the same phenomenon, it's more plausible than most other theories. The fact that Moore didn't detect any web when waving his hand above the dancing rock could be explained by the web being anchored to surrounding trees at different angles.

Subsequent to our visit, at least one other person has captured footage of a similar "dancing rock" in Fairbairn Pines. In that film you can clearly see the spider web. Who'd have thought? And yes, a case in point that it pays to keep an open mind.

If you've found anything unusual in a spider web, please let me know.

Over the past couple of months, car loads of Y-platers have made trips to Narooma to observe the small colony of seals on the southern breakwall to Wagonga Inlet.

"How cool is that, it saved us going all the way across to Montague Island to see them," reports John Smithers, of Franklin.

However, while recently checking out the seals, Jules Rush got more than she bargained for when, on the cliff face overlooking the breakwall, she came face-to-face with a diamond python.

"It was so huge and absolutely beautiful," she marvels. What a ripper.

One reader who won't be pleased to see Jules' photo is Bob Gardiner of Isabella Plains who is struggling to cope with the recent spate of snake photos splashed over these pages.

"I've formed something of an affinity with your excellent column. Saturday isn't complete until I've read you and Jack Waterford," grovels Bob. "But I have just one small request ... could you please lay off the pictures of those things that slide on their bellies?" he asks.

Why? Well it appears poor Bob suffers from acute ophidiophobia - a fear of snakes.

"I got into trouble at university (what do you mean, you won't count scales to identify it? It's dead ...); gave up orienteering with the world's high jump record; ditto bushwalking with the world's long jump record and politely asked one of my Duke of Edinburgh students to kindly take the snake skin out of my boot ... you get the idea," he explains.

And it doesn't stop there. "My wife tells me when it's safe to look up while watching the news, and always staples together the pages of your column when she thinks it's too scary for me," reveals Bob who pleads "please help me to continue to follow your adventures without fear - no more snakes!"

Gee, OK, Bob, anything to stop your wife putting a staple through my photo. Ouch.

Clue: De-noted

Degree of difficulty: Easy - Medium

Last week: Congratulations to Helen Nock of Potato Point who was first (and only!) to correctly identify last week's photo as an old service station on the Princes Highway at Bodalla. I've made this week's a bit easier, and closer to home.

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and suburb to tym@iinet.net.au. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday February 13, 2021, wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.

To coincide with the National Archives of Australia blockbuster exhibition Out of this World: Australia in the Space Age, this column is in search of anyone who has seen a UFO around Canberra, better still if you have any "evidence", photos or otherwise. Please send to the address at the end of this column. Oh, and the archive's exhibition, which explores how the space age captured the imagination of our nation, from mid-century fashion and flying saucer societies to early satellites and rocket playgrounds, is on show daily until March 14 at the archives' headquarters on Queen Victoria Terrace in Parkes. Entry is free.

On a recent stroll around Monash, Mark Le Couteur of Oxley noticed that "the shadows on this rock around noon make it look like a head". Indeed they do. If you want to check it out for yourself, the rock is just off Erindale Drive, near Blakey Close.

CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick