dang spiders! (1 Viewer)

it all started about a week ago. I had moved my HT into my basement because it was cooler and bigger than my upstairs bedroom. anyhow I was laying in bed around 1:30 AM and this big ol spider runs across my wall 2 ft fro mmy head. needless to say I jumped up to get away from it. for some reason it just sat there on my wall so i took a flash light and looked at it closer. I saw what looked like a violen on it's back so i started getting worried it might be a brown recluse. I went on the internet to get photos of it and turns out it is not a recluse(phew!). It looked much closer to a hobo spider :frowning:. For thous of you that don't know a hobo spider inflicts the same type of wound as a recluse. So I killed it and went to sleep. The next day I told my mom and she said she had been kinda wanting me to move back upstairs because it was a bit dusty in the basement. I had no arguments at the time so I moved back into my upstairs room. Since then i had found 2 small spiders in my room which is no big deal. But tonight I was playing a game on the net and guess what. This huge spider darts across my floor. It scared the living crap outta me. I'm not usually scared of spiders but when a 2" plus spider runs right past your foot it's a little different. I decided to catch this one and show it to my dad. So i got a jar and scooped the spider up. FYI the big pic in the middle of the page is what my spider looks like..
http://www.srv.net/~dkv/hobospider/european.html

And believe it or not it is just about 1/4" smaller that the pic. So I go downstairs to watch the latenight news on Iraqi. We at about 12:30 AM while I was on the couch I see a something move. I look closer and it's another huge spider! It was a little bigger than the one in that photo! I tried to catch that one also but it got away. I'm getting tired of these spiders. And for some reason they only come out when i'm around }:frowning:. So all in all that totals 4 of thous huge spiders in less than a week. I am now seriously thinking about a spider trap even though the spiders i have a beneficial. So what do you guys think. Live with the huge spiders or get a spider glue trap and kill some?



Ryan

I would set the trap. Sounds like you have an infestation. If you're seeing the same type of spider that frequently, they've set up shop somewhere in your house. Calling an exterminator might not be a bad idea either.

Bruce

The really weird thing is that I have not seeing any spiders until about a week ago. I attribute that to the weather but i really don't remember seeing any of these spiders in the past 6 years i've lived in this house. I still can't figure out where they came from. I guess they must have been living in the walls all this time or something. I think i'm going to setup a glue trap under near my bed. That should at least kill the ones in my room. I don't really know if my parents want to exterminate them since they are beneficial to our house. I just don't want them in my room!


Ryan

These spiders may be of the rare Italian variant of the European House Spider family. If you had simply let the first spider go I'm sure you would never have seen one again. However, since you killed it the local 'Familia' may have called a vendetta against you, hence the additional spiders.

If you wake up with a horse's head in your bed, you should probably move house.

Adam

Ehhh, let the little buggers live... They wont crawl up your nose when you're sleeping and set up residence in your brain. Really, trust me!

You probably had an eggsac somewhere and lets just say it just hatched.

Most spiders only live 2/3 weeks at the most. The Tarantulas are the ones that live longer and the females of most arachnids live longer than the males. I don't think you need to exterminate, it'll balance itself out over time.

Jay

Speaking of pests, last night I found out I have a possum or some other furry animal living on my roof. I don't know how it got there (there are no trees close enough) -- maybe it just climbed up.

I'm hoping it moves somewhere else by the time I get home from work...

Might have to put a trap up there, Brian. My neighbor set four traps on his roof about a year ago because he said he had raccoons. We all laughed at him, but when I left for work the next morning, I saw that three of those traps did indeed have raccoons in them.

Great spider story. I was visiting some friends in Maine last year, and they have a house on a lake there. They have a bit of an overhang where the the roof meets the porch. There were easily two dozen spiders up there, all about six inches away from each other, and each no smaller than a half dollar. But they stayed up there, and left as alone. Around dinnertime, we started to notice lots of dragonflies, and were worried that they were going to bother us during dinner. Then the spiders started attacking these dragonflies, all of which were easily three inches long. It was really fascinating to watch the spiders overtake these dragonflies, paralyze them with their venom, wrap 'em up, and bring 'em back up to their webs.

Later on, we started catching dragonflies, and tossing them up for the spiders. Really cool to watch.

I've been known to do similar stuff. The coolest is cool spring mornings where the dew forms on all the spider webs on my bushes surrounding my house. When I was younger, I would plop any kind of bug onto them just to watch what would happen. Some bugs would escape and almost more often than not, nothing would happen except the bug would get caught. The next day, there would be a little coccoon of said meal, but more often than not, I didn't have the patience to sit there and watch for much long time. Today, I have tarantulas so depending on my time, I can throw a cricket in there and watch the resulting prance or if I don't have time, I can simply drop the cricket in front of the T and it'll have a quick death.

Jay

I can understand have an abundance of small spiders (as in a recent hatch). Only a fraction of them will live to see adulthood anyway. But if you're seeing several large spiders, wouldn't that mean there is also an abundance of food? If you manage to kill all the spiders, their food sources will multiply and spread, again making your house a "target rich environment" for another spider infestation. I hate the thought of several large spiders in my house, but I really don't like thinking of all the other critters running around as their prey. I'd just have everything killed. Much simpler that way.

I had a huge spider setup shop in front of my bay window (outside the house). I left him there because he was outside and he was really neat looking. I had planned to setup a webcam and stream him out to the Internet just for kicks, and so I could capture a still shot every minute to keep a "record" of his daily activity. In essence, I was going to adopt him as a sort of wild pet.

But he only stayed there for about a week, and then he was gone. :frowning:

I've been reading up on the tegenaria spiders a little more. And form what i've read the female tegenarias can live up to 4 years! Heres some interesting info (long)..

"Domestic house spiders are major food competitors of the hobo spider and compete for web sites as well. In southern Idaho, domestica often lives colonially in crawl spaces beneath homes in rural areas. These colonies may consist of 30 to 100 or more specimens which construct webs in the floor joints and corners, as well as in storage boxes, bottles and other objects being stored in the space. As domestic house spiders are not seasonal (unlike T. agrestis and T. gigantea), these colonies are active year-round. The presence of large T. domestica colonies in the crawl spaces of rural homes virtually guarantees the relative absence of hobo spiders in such homes. As hobo spiders are noticeably absent from the premises of most buildings with large domestica colonies, yet are present in similar habitats where domestica has not established colonies, the domestic house spider can be exemplified as a competitor which can successfully prevent the invasion of hobo spiders by the principle of competitive exclusion. Domestic house spider colonization should be encouraged in rural areas within the North American range of the hobo spider; destroying domestica colonies with sprays, bug bombs etc. in such areas is extremely foolish, and is an open invitation for subsequent invasion by the hobo spider."

I looked in the unfinished part of my basement on the floor joints and I found a bunch of webs. BTW my spider does have rings around it's legs so according to that bit of info it's harmless . But it also rules out the gigantea tegenaria. Maybe I have mutant domestica tegenarias! I'll get a pic of my spider tonight and post it in the web. BTW notice this in the above statement "Domestic house spiders are major food competitors of the hobo spider and compete for WEB SITES as well" I didn't know spiders knew how to use computers LOL.



Ryan

well Hobo spiders are dangerous to humans. The bit of a hobo spider can be viewed here (warning graphic image)

http://hobospider.org/index.html

The bite is just as serious as a brown recluse bite. And thats why hobo spiders are bad. The domestica is completely harmless to humans and kill hobos so they are good to have. Fortunately hobos are not within 2 sates of here according to this map

http://hobospider.org/index.html





Ryan

Spiders freak me out. I saw one this morning in the shower, killed it before I even knew what it was, but it was about an inch and a half to two inches long from leg to leg. Yuk.

In december of last year, I heard this report on NPR about a family who live in a house with thousands of brown recluse spiders. I could NOT live there...



http://discover.npr.org/features/fea...ml?wfId=881751

/Mike

yeah, If you have brown recluses in your house you will have a LOT of them not just one or two. They live in colonies. I've read many stories on brown recluses. In one case there was a school out on a bug collecting trip. Within 8 mins the kids collected over 60 brown recluses with there BARE hands! None of the kids got bitten. In another case there where college students cleaning out there dorms and on student found 6 recluses living in his box springs. He also never got bitten. Most people think recluses go out at night looking for someone to bite, thats simply not true. a spiders first action when confronted with humans is run. the only time they bite is when they are cornered and have no escape. Like if you were to roll over ontop of them in your bed. I personally wound not be able to live in a house with 2000+ recluses. I think thats crazy. If I knew my house had recluses I would have them exterminated. Even though people have lived with them and never got bitten theres still a chance someone will get bitten. And thats a chance I would not be willing to take especially if I had kids.




Ryan

There's all kinds of spiders here in my area due to me living near woods and a swamp. I even have some black widow spiders in my garage. My family, pets, and I don't bother the black widows, so there's virtually no chance of getting bitten. They are a good pest control animal and don't bother us anyways, so it's kind of mean to bother them. There are spiders in my cellar too, due to it have many nooks and crannies, being damp and dark, having many food sources, etc. They hardly ever venture up to thre main house due to my cats catching them and eating them. I have no idea why my cats like eating spiders. They rather catch spiders than the wild mice and rats around here.

I had a friend who was bitten by a black widow (and he's had brown recluse encounters as well). As a result of the bite, he almost lost his arm. They had to drill a hole in his arm to extract the affected area. Ever since then, and I'm not joking here, he seems to attract spiders.

I am terrified of spiders, especially of the Hobo/Recluse variety. I can deal with some garden spiders, baby spiders, etc, but when they get really big, hairy, pronounced, baring their fangs at me, and when their venom is fatal... forget it. I wouldn't be caught dead in a house with 2000+ recluses. That's just crazy. That's just wrong.



~j

This thread on spiders is just icky. They creap me out like nothing else. In fact all bugs of all kinds creap me out. I got no problem with bugs outside, but as soon as they get inside its spray down the inside and outside barriers, kill them all.