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Thanks guys. I was able to sleep after starting the laundry and taking a nip of the NyQuil.

I like that cat suggestion but then it adds the problem of being a cat owner.

The DemonWP seems a bit extreme. Do I have to leave my place for a day or is it just some sort of "leave it there" poison like rat poison?

Also yes, I don't vacuum often and I live in a basement. Perhaps I need to pick up better vacuuming habits.

lordtottuu wrote:

paulWTAMU wrote:

They make good pets actually, very low care requirments--but that's just me.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070801

That comic strip is actually pretty funny, I liked it, hahaha. My first time reading that.

Pfffft, why do people have a irrational fear of small invertebrates?

I think it has a little something to do with the word "phobia".

Synchromesh wrote:

Just recently, however, I had a spider problem with one of my cars. They were living in the mirrors and would continuously weave webs from mirrors to doors. The car is sitting most of the time since I'm driving the other one so it makes sense. I tried destroying the webs every time I saw them but new ones would appear the next day. So I finally washed the car (it was long overdue) and tried to water the mirrors quite well. So far good results with no webs for a couple of weeks. Of course I don't know spider logic enough to say that I got rid of them for sure. Maybe they're just trying to trap me.

Actually, for what it's worth, most spiders rebuild their webs daily anyway, so you probably weren't really impacting him all that much.

I usually catch and put outside the larger freaky insects, tiny ones I ignore, and biting ones I kill, but I recently got caught offguard by one of those centipedes and bitchslapped it hard enough to kill it. When i looked closer and saw that all the severed limbs were still moving i was NOT OK with it.

My worst story is the 1 hour 45 minutes i spent trying to trap an adorable baby field mouse that somehow got into my apartment. I completely tore the place apart and FINALLY caught it.

The offending rodent:

did you name the spider boris?

Spiders outdoors get to live, unless they're making a web in an obnoxious location of the house, or if they're black widows, in which case they get to die. Ditto for any other poisonous spider, albeit we don't have brown recluses in the wild here. Did find and kill one in Mighigan, once.

I'm not arachnophobic, but the little guys do make me a hair squeamish, the webs are a nuisance indoors, and the silver-dollar sized wolf spider that crawled out of my bedspread once definitely crossed the line.

Ditto on the cat idea. Before they get old and lazy, cats are some of the most efficient indoor pest control devices known to man. My folks' cat completely solved the basement cricket problem during her younger years.

Spiders outdoors get to live, unless they're making a web in an obnoxious location of the house, or if they're black widows, in which case they get to die.

Oh, I'm with you. I love watching spiders spin webs - especially whilst enjoying one or several certain substances - but when they come onto my turf, clearly delineated by the "walls" and "doors" and "ceilings" and "amenities" and "stinky human smell"... well, that sort of invasion of privacy just don't stand, whether it's Feds or spiders, they're goin' down.

MBIlover wrote:

Since you have many spiders that size in your place, there are two assumptions:

1) You don't dust/vacuum often enough in the corners of your house.

2) There are many bugs that are to be consumed by these spiders that do not have a natural predator anymore.

What do you think the natural predators for insects are? Spiders of course.

Personally I leave all the webs in my place that have spiders alone. There is big one in the corner near the ceiling in my shower that I see every morning. Saw it this morning while showering. If it is moving about lower down I try shoo it up so I don't accidentally wash it down the drain.

Unless I wake up and they are crawling across my face, spiders don't bother me. Of all Arthropods, spiders are the good guys in my book.

There was a spider swimming in my toilet this morning as I went for my morning glory. What a terrifying way to die.

I also live in a basement apartment, an during summer I have one of the windows open at all times. Even if it's in the basement, the heat makes i unbearable otherwise. And this windows obviously is the pearly gates for many spiders looking to escape the sun.

Mostly it's regular house spiders, which can get quite large, the other ones I probably don't notice. And I don't mind them too much. Mostly they stay in the dark corners, and takes a stroll along the wall now and then. They're probably a lot more afraid of me than the other way around. Sometimes they even provide and additional spooke when you're watching a good horror movie or similar, and there's this large shadow crawling along the wall behind the TV or the monitor.

But as many have mentioned, sometimes they just cross the line. Once one of those had taken its refuge in the shower curtains. Huge, probably a perverted female just waiting for me to close them curtains and oogle me 4-ways. There was a very brief moment of surprise and confusion, followed by a moment of sheer horror.

They're also known to harass my friends, many a girley screams have come out from this apartment from not so girley men, thanks to them.

I've also heard that spider can also be a good sign of a good living enviroment. My guess is, not so much if it's clean and dustfree as temperature and humidity.

edit: http://www.srv.net/~dkv/hobospider/european.html

FubbHead wrote:

Huge, probably a perverted female just waiting for me to close them curtains and oogle me 4-ways.

Uh, that would be "8-ways".

Darkmage wrote:

FubbHead wrote:

Huge, probably a perverted female just waiting for me to close them curtains and oogle me 4-ways.

Uh, that would be "8-ways".

Ack... I feel violated.

mac_h8r1 wrote:

There was a spider swimming in my toilet this morning as I went for my morning glory. What a terrifying way to die.

Morning Glory must have a whole different meaning in the USA than it does over here.

Yeah btw guys, on the FOLLOWING night, roughly the same time, yet ANOTHER spider of the same size and genus crawled to my dresser. I killed him too. What the heck?

If another one shows up tonight ...

If you have lots of spiders in your house -- and large, healthy spiders to boot -- it probably means that you have a lot of insects in your apartment that the spiders get to eat. More than likely, killing the spiders will result in an uncomfortable rise in the creepy-crawly-biting insect population in your home.

If you're concerned with the spiders being poisonous, you can bring a fresh specimen to your local wildlife conservatory, natural history museum, or similar place and they'll be happy to ID it for you.

In my house, there's a mutual understanding between my spiders and I. Spiders in webs get to hang out. As long as they're actively doing their jobs and catching insects, they earn their keep. I'm less tolerant with spiders that run around outside of webs. I usually catch those and throw them into potted plants or outside.

Here in New York City, spiders don't get large enough to eat roaches. In fact, I'm pretty sure the opposite happens, and roaches eat spiders, as your average NYC roach is easily 3-4x the size of your average house spider.

It'd be fun to see a NYC roach tangle with a spider from the OP. The spider's only chance would be to startle the roach and flip it over to access the soft underbelly and bite the roach while it's incapacitated. Otherwise, the roach's hard shell would protect it, or it could run or fly away.

Some said here that they've seen spiders on their shower curtains. I've had a few roaches on my shower curtains, and while it's probably less scary, it's about as unpleasant.

Spiders got nothing on earwigs. Spiders I'm sort of meh about. Earwigs die wherever they cross my path.

FireGryphon wrote:

Here in New York City, spiders don't get large enough to eat roaches. In fact, I'm pretty sure the opposite happens, and roaches eat spiders, as your average NYC roach is easily 3-4x the size of your average house spider.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_bug

Most cockroaches are "German":
http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/urban/roaches/german.htm

JustAnEngineer wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmetto_bug

Yep, we have these here. I don't typically notice the German ones, as the ones here are typically brown, not translucent. I've seen them fly and attack people in the subways here. It's freakish.

Yikes! I just felt something crawl over my foot, and sure enough,



He's a small one, but he's still very fast and quite heavy. I flipped him onto his back to incapacitate him while I took this picture, then collected him carefully in a cup (covered, of course) and flushed him down the toilet.

I'm so glad those bugs are extremely uncommon here.

This thread creeps me out, i've been unable to read it.

Somehow a roach has been living on the floorboards of my car. Which is really weird since I keep it clean of all trash, and just have random electronics hangning around (GPS antenna, inverter, cd case, cell charger, etc.)

ssidbroadcast wrote:

Yeah btw guys, on the FOLLOWING night, roughly the same time, yet ANOTHER spider of the same size and genus crawled to my dresser. I killed him too. What the heck?

If another one shows up tonight ...

When you get a lot of the same kind of spider in a short time span, it's quite probable that an egg sac hatched somewhere nearby.

ludi wrote:

ssidbroadcast wrote:

Yeah btw guys, on the FOLLOWING night, roughly the same time, yet ANOTHER spider of the same size and genus crawled to my dresser. I killed him too. What the heck?

If another one shows up tonight ...

When you get a lot of the same kind of spider in a short time span, it's quite probable that an egg sac hatched somewhere nearby.

Right, but these are massive spiders he's seeing. They don't hatch that big... or do they? ::queue scary music::

FireGryphon wrote:

ludi wrote:

ssidbroadcast wrote:

Yeah btw guys, on the FOLLOWING night, roughly the same time, yet ANOTHER spider of the same size and genus crawled to my dresser. I killed him too. What the heck?

If another one shows up tonight ...

When you get a lot of the same kind of spider in a short time span, it's quite probable that an egg sac hatched somewhere nearby.

Right, but these are massive spiders he's seeing. They don't hatch that big... or do they? ::queue scary music::

No they don't, but some can be easy to miss when they first hatch (I've seen many varieties of baby spiders that were smaller than fruit flies), or they may have just recently found a way indoors after having some time to mature. Could be that he's got a kerbajillion insects around, but otherwise, it's likely they all showed up from a nearby hatching site -- otherwise food competition would have gotten out of hand and the stragglers would have either perished or spread outward.

FireGryphon wrote:

Yikes! I just felt something crawl over my foot, and sure enough,

He's a small one, but he's still very fast and quite heavy. I flipped him onto his back to incapacitate him while I took this picture, then collected him carefully in a cup (covered, of course) and flushed him down the toilet.

Holy Jeebus! That crawled across your foot?? If that were my foot I'd immediately severe it and throw it in an incinerator––oh wait…

Luckily in Seattle, WA cockroaches only seem to appear in the crappiest of apartments, and they don't get that big. At least, certainly not QUARTER sized.

BTW, great photography in general, even if it is repulsive.

And as for the guys suggesting that an egg sac unleashed nearby: thanks, it's hard enough coping WITHOUT thinking about that!

I've never really had too many issues with spiders, I've been around them in the open and in homes. I've been bitten by Black Widows and Brown Recluses and they seem to have very little effect on me, luckily. However, I must admit, that as calm as I am around them, I still respect the deadly ones and I will not hesitate to swipe them off of me as quickly as possible, venomous or not. Otherwise, I generally just let them be.

The only crawly that I ever really have a problem with are ants. Though they are harmless where I live, I absolutely cannot be around them if they are indoors.

I heard of a neat way to kill roaches.......baking soda. Just spread some of it in the areas they seem to populate, and as they scurry across the stuff they will ingest enough of it that when it gets to their digestive system it will start to bubble and expand. Seeing as how they have no way to get rid of the gas build up they just basically get killed from the internal build up of pressure. They don't blow up or anything like that (that would be really cool if it did happen though) they just die within a few minutes.

ssidbroadcast wrote:

...

According to what I've researched, it should be a Hobo Spider. It matches the region and has the same gnarly looking fangly things. I guess that means I can rest knowing I won't die in my sleep from a spider bite, but still. I'm effing freaked. What should I do? Any home-owning gerbils here have experience with spider infestations? I'm afraid to open the water-heater closet. I'm fielding any and all suggestions.[/img]

That Hobo spider looks very similar to a common harmless spider we have here in Australia, called a
Huntsman Spider. I was lucky enough to capture a couple of shots (with my crappy old Nokia 3200 LMAO phone) 2yrs ago at work with my mates, seeing one at least as big as my hand!

The top of this yellow post was a little bigger than my hand (that is not me in the background, he's from work)


I ran out of memory on my phone, so I could only take one TINY far away shot at the time ..


My workmates and I were putting this large slow moving spider in our hats for fun, not harming it of course. And put in back on a tree later, and it didn't move at all when we pet the spiders furry back/body!

Tho, my brother has apparently killed one even bigger in our old shed (10+ years ago) at home, it was the size of a dinner plate!