What do you do with the spiders in your house?

There is a great book for natural ways to deal with all sorts of small pests called Tiny Game Hunting. I've got an old copy but I understand there is a new edition and I think I'll get that to stay current.

 

The spiders in my house can usually hear the vacuum coming, and I give them a chance to run away. The ones in the shower in the morning are calmly scooped up and put in a safer place. The previous owner suffered a nasty bite from a Brown Recluse, so I'm wary of those in the garden, but I've yet to see any. I've taught my kids not to fear 'creepy crawlies' in general, and my youngest is very proud of her dead bug collection.

As a kid, I used to bring snakes home all the time for my Mom. Her screams always made the hunt worthwhile.

 

Cremation or fry them with electricity. They mainly get fried by my modified bug zapper.

 

We have open beam rough wood construction so every so often we vacuum everything or else the house looks like it's decorated for Halloween. We use the roach traps with Fipronil (quick kill) or my hand for large roaches. Also vacuum large spiders in the tub area so no no freaks out and slips. Small centipedes get vacuumed, large ones get to be stunt doubles in King Kong. This one crawled up the wall a few inches from my wife's face.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(koa @ Aug 22 2007, 04:44 PM) [snapback]500602[/snapback]</div>

Um, ok. That might just freak me out a wee bit.

 

Spiders in my sink or tub I give an option to. They can either learn to swim, run away, or drown. Most choose the third option.

 

This is one time that I'm a real girly-girl. I yell for hubby, and he performs the 'bug dance' (an all-purpose bug dance, for any crawly thing we find; it's not just limited to spiders). It's a hilarious thing to see, as he is pretty uncoordinated and dances for a while to get the job done. I stay a safe distance away and alternately giggle and yell at him to hurry. He then picks up the corpse in a piece of toilet paper, and performs a solemn burial at sea, saluting as the corpse swirls its way toward the septic tank. Yep, he salutes. Every time.

If I really MUST do the assassination myself, there's not enough left to flush.

 

My daughter controls this.

The ones that look like daddy long legs get put outside.

Other small ones get mushed, or trapped and put outside.

I used pest control because the ants were overwhelming my attempts at control; massive invasions were occuring nightly over the smallest crumb or water source.

Interestingly, the exterminator also dealth with a colony in the compost bin. It used to have loads of 'roll-up' bugs - but those were gone after the treatment. Now the compost steams more often when I turn it, so that is a good thing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Aug 22 2007, 10:40 AM) [snapback]500415[/snapback]</div>

One of these spiders is actually the only spider which has ever scared the #$% out of me. By scared, I'm talking jump 3 or 4 feet and hope not to lose bladder control scared. After working very late (about 11:00pm), I left my office, locked the door, and started out in the dark. Some sub-conscious discomfort made me stop. I had nor seen the spider or it's web. Looking around to figure out what was bothering me, my eyes focused on the HUGE spider 2-3 inches from the end of my nose. Huge. 2-3 inches. Think about it.

After panicing and calming down again, I took a moment to look at the spider. It had built a 5-6 foot wide web between the two pillars on either side of the porch stairs. I had to leave it alone, for it's amazing architecture. I'm just glad I saw it before it hit me in the face. I'm pretty sure a 2" spider on the face would have been worse.....

 

Most spiders around our house get squashed by the heel of my shoe, generally after one of the female members of the household scream at me to "kill it". Unfortunately they all have a dislike for any insect. The daddy long legs generally get ignored by me, or, at least until I get screamed at.

Occassionally need to be a little careful with some of the outside spiders - we are in an area where Funnel Web spiders are common (not too many deaths lately from bites from these spiders, but they can make you real sick - like hospitalisation needed). I used to have a colony of red-backs (bites from these can also make you sick) in the garage, but finally cleaned them out when we rebuilt the garage. Australian spiders can be aggressive and fight back, so you can understand my family's reaction.

 

We get these babies in the house and occasionally in the car!


I used to have a 77 chevy truck and while driving down a busy road, I flipped down the visor and one of these bad boys fell into my lap.. :blink: I drove off the road , thru a fence & into a drainage ditch screaming the whole time while trying to get the hell out of that cab... h34r:


As for the centipeede yuck! Whats an open rafter roof? :huh:


Another one we have plenty of is the HOBO Spider, this one can get fairly large and is quite nasty.
Below is a bite from the HOBO.



Or the occasional recluse spider, these are just as bad as the Hobo's.


The recluse bite:



I do wonder when one of thereturning troops brings home the dreaded Camel spider

 

And I thought spiders were those little crawly things the cat snacks on. No wonder you feel such a strong need for firearms.

 

Those brown spiders get fairly LARGE Ive seen them the size of a large mans hand.

Err uh um when I was 15 I saw one of those on the floor of my parents living room. I picked up a shoe and had to wack it twice! then a wave in a perfect circle around the dead spider was all the babies escaping.... I jumped up and sprayed them all with WD40, of course My parents where p*ssed because they had to get new carpets....

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ Aug 23 2007, 06:10 AM) [snapback]501021[/snapback]</div>

I guess I should have said exposed rafter ceiling.




I had one of those brown spiders on my outside rear view mirror hanging on at 60mph. Thought I'd role down the window a bit and flick it off with a rolled up piece of paper. As soon as I got close to it, it jumped onto the window and ran inside my truck and over my shoulder seat belt and into the back seat. Had to stop and find him. Found him in the back door pocket. He would run outside and when I went to flick him off he'd run back inside. This went on for awhile until I finally got him off the truck.

When my wife lived on Kauai and stayed up at Kokee the bed legs were put in pans of water so the centipedes wouldn't crawl up onto the bed.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(koa @ Aug 23 2007, 02:05 PM) [snapback]501112[/snapback]</div>

Man what a beutiful house!!!!

Arrugh, I just got the heebee Jeebee's, yuck I wonder what most people would do if they found a few of those huge centepede critters in their beds ? :wacko:

Do they bite as well?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ Aug 23 2007, 08:40 AM) [snapback]501127[/snapback]</div>

My wife and daughter scream and jump out of bed, I say a few choice words and jump out of bed. I've been stung a few times. It hurts and swells up, usually not too bad. The little ones are actually worse than the big ones. Almost any large rock that's turned over outside will have pedes under it. My wife cuts them up with a knife to kill them, but that large one was on the wall and we didn't want to gouge the wall so I placed a disposable plastic container over it, then punched a hole in it and then sprayed it with Dust Off air spray since I didn't want to stain the wall. It either froze to death or over dosed on the high kids gets from those things. We then put it in the freezer over night to make sure it was dead.

The insect problem is really not that bad. What's far worse is the feral pigs. Right now I'm in the process of reinforcing a retaining wall where I park because the pigs have undermined the bottom. They also took out some footings to a stainway.

 

Note to self: If I ever make an appearance in the afterlife, make sure I don't acquire the form of a spider - or at least make sure I'm larger than a shoe.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Aug 23 2007, 06:17 PM) [snapback]501233[/snapback]</div>

:huh: :mellow: :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Aug 23 2007, 12:17 PM) [snapback]501233[/snapback]</div>

Or hope the homeowner went through a mysterious fog.
http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1362/Mptv...ath_key=0050539

 

We see the occasional critter here in Texas. Some of the worse ones in the house have been scorpions and once I've smashed a huge spider (must have been a Wolf spider), but by far the most common would be the cockroach (the cats and dog make quick work of them, usually leaving them stranded upside down). Outside, we have had rattlesnakes around, although never acually in the yard but by far the closest encounter was this one:



I was putting up a small section of chain link fence to keep the dog away from the pond I had just built and nearly stepped on it, instead of stepping on it I leaped higher into the air than I ever had before. I showed this picture from my cell phone to the vet the next time we were in for a visit, he and his colleage determined it was a Texas Rat Snake. The neighbor ended up shooting it to death with a BB gun after my attempts to herd it into a trash can failed and it wandered into his yard, all before a snake enthusiast friend of mine could arrive to help us capture it. For size reference, the big brown leaf in the picture is probably a good 3 inches or so, and the snakes head and tail both go out of the picture, I would say it appeared to be about 5' long.