In my neck of the woods we are covered in the Japanese Joro spiders. They supposedly came over stowaway in a shipping container. They are everywhere, 8-10 of them on my deck. The web stringers are much stronger that your usual spider web, if they were 1/2” you could rope a steer with them. Nasty to walk through in the woods. Luckily they stay out of the house.

My late wife was bitten by a brown recluse. Confirmed by the nature of the resulting wound. She nearly died from an ensuing staph infection. Lengthy hospital stay getting IV antibiotics. She survived that, but passed away several years later due to septic shock from another staph infection. I'm killing every spider I find.

I take a Darwinian approach.... Spiders outside, I leave alone. Spiders in my house just get the Darwin award !

I hate freakin' spiders more than snakes or anything else. Spiders in the house are dispatched immediately but the ones outside are ok as long as their webs don't block the entrances.

My parents had brown recluses in their house...lots of them. One thing I came to realize after the exterminator came in was, you will find no other spiders, no other bugs if you have a brown recluse problem. Sure enough...they were all that was there. He said food supply is their only limit and once they eat all of that, they eat themselves. He once found a bathtub full of spider legs and one brown recluse in there, one fell in and ate the other.

After that, I wanted to hug every spider I saw in our house as it meant there (likely) wasn't a brown recluse infestation.

quote:

Should I kill spiders in my home?

Short answer - no*. They're harmless*, and earn a living eating things you also don't want in the house. And probably a lot of them.

* except venomous ones - black widow, brown recluse, etc. Kill those.

Yeah, in my house, spiders get a pass. They police up other bugs.

And umm, sorry for eatin' your relatives'n'shit, spiders. They should stay away from my pie hole when I'm sleeping. And when I'm awake.

well,

in my shop, the Wolf spiders are welcome,
and in my garage as well,

all of them are named Boris, regardless,

and get free reign of whatever or where ever they want to go,


however, in the house, they have to answer to the 3 housecats, one, the only male, is a bit psycho, and does not seem to care, the 2 females in the house see any insect as a toy, and will quickly use them as such and kill them,

regardless of my or the wife's interest,

I found this in my brother’s garage in VA. I’m rather tolerant, and I left this one alone, but it tested my limits. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t look appealing.

I see little spiders, not much bigger than a shirt button, at my workplace from time to time dangling from the ceiling (which is a good 12-15 feet high) on their little rappelling lines. This would be like a man from, as a very rough estimate, 2000 feet.

^^^^
An egg sack, I’m guessing.

As I described in the thread below, I’ve long kept a spider-friendly house. Small fuzzy brown ones that made small webs at intersections of my floor and two walls. They kept the damn silverfish population down.

But when my crickets showed up a few years ago all other bugs, including the spiders, completely disappeared. They’re aggressive and diligent predators.

I think I have a superior breed of crickets. Light brown, about 1/2” long. I see, on average, about one a day. And always on the floor. Never in my cupboards or drawers like the damn silverfish. And only in my kitchen, bathroom, or the hallways that link them.

I really like my little crickets.

“Does anyone else here keep crickets?”
https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...550099005#5550099005

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:

*snip*all of them are named Boris

Fan of The Who by chance?

Spiders in my house get a pass, as long as I can't see them.

If I see you, you better run because I'm coming after you.

If I see you in the bathroom or shower, you better have your affairs in order as you are done.

Spiders and snakes don’t bother me, never have…camel crickets and house centipedes are another story (I’ve made my peace with them over the last few years…I’ve got a dedicated shot glass and a thin cardboard sheet I use to catch and release them outside (camel crickets are a chore to capture because they are always “jumpy” lil bastages…but I try)…my favorite spiders are the various Orb Weavers like the rotund orange one pictured earlier or the yellow and black “writing spiders” (Charlotte…but I’ve never had one talk to me about pigs) or the grey jumping spiders that frequent my screened porch…they do more good than bad …

The first time l saw a “wind scorpion” or solpugid was in the magazine ‘Arizona Highways’ that my former neighbor gifted me with a subscription as well as Morgan silver dollars for my two daughters after he and his wife moved back West to be with their children (they were in their 80s and were fantastic neighbors and friends ))…I thought to myself “what a scary looking, but harmless creature”