The Sword and Laser discussion
What's with the giant spiders?
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Gard
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Sep 25, 2014 09:43AM
Anyone else run into this? I've killed three of the largest spiders I've ever seen this week. The last one exploded and the goo looked like alien acid blood.
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SPIDERS! *runs from room*But seriously, spiders are benevolent creatures. Take them outside if you can't tolerate them in the house. It isn't all that hard.
I've not experienced that, but, I have been having a recurring dream about spiders. In my dream, I'm asleep and then wakeup to find a giant, hairy spider crawling on me.
I haven't yet, but now that you've mentioned it I'll be seeing them everywhere.
Reminds me of this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYhL...
Worth watching the whole thing if you haven't seen it.
John wrote: "SPIDERS! *runs from room*But seriously, spiders are benevolent creatures. Take them outside if you can't tolerate them in the house. It isn't all that hard."
+1
I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to take these giant, mutated, genetically superior spiders out and set them free to breed with mean neighborhood dogs. Then I'd have a whole new problem.
Agree 100% they are all over the house. I think this time of year they come inside looking for sexytime...http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/29299758
Kids news story but relevant...
I love a massive outdoors spider web. I went on a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains last week and found a such a web. It was amazing. Not so happy with webs in the house.
Where I live we back onto bush and because of that we tend to have a few Brown Huntsman in the house. They're insectivorous, so we tend to leave them alone when they're small. They grow to about the size of your palm and at that point you can hear them on the walls at night which is when I usually catch them and put them outside.We have had a couple of Giant Grey Huntsmen spiders and due to their size I put them outside immediately. Those ones start at the size of your palm and get bigger from there ...
To catch them I put a plastic container over the top of them and slip a thin piece of cardboard underneath it. Usually you can do that when they're on a wall and they'll hold still for it. When the cardboard goes underneath they'll jump* onto the plastic container and can be removed quite easily.
* Doing this with a Grey, you get an audible thump as they hit the plastic container and you can usually feel the impact if you're holding it. My daughters think that's the cool bit :)
It is spider mating season. I have tons of orb weavers making beautiful patterns in the bushes outside my house. I love them... until I absently walk through one.
See, I like spiders, so I would have no problem if they were running about my house (I haven't seen one in months, but hey ho) but what bothered me more was an article I saw, which I think was in the metro, saying England was getting a ton of really big spiders coming into folks homes because of the unusually mild summer we have had here. That was one of the most depressing things I have read, because the word 'mild' should not be used to describe summer, certainly not as something out of the ordinary. Mild winter would be fine. I'd even accept a mild autumn. But surely a summer should, at the very least, be mild, and more often warm, and sometimes even hot. If big spiders are the result of a mild summer...well, that just shows how crappy our summers are. Seems we either get cold summers or giant spiders. Can I move please? ;P
I appreciate spiders, but I do not like spiders. They creep me right the hell out.Look at this photo I took of a wolf spider carrying her egg sac. She mugged me in order to pay for those 1,500 kids. I saw her just the other day in the garage, and she's easily 50% larger now.
I must be an oddball, coz all I can think looking at that picture is 'CUUUUUUUUTE!!!'
I classify spiders into 3 types. 1. Poisonous 2. Not poisonous but web-making 3. The rest. Huntsmen fall into category 3 and I love having them around because they kill bitey insects like mosquitoes. I enjoy watching their surreptitious progress.The poisonous ones I regretfully kill if they are around the house, and the web-makers I move outside well away from the house to make cleaning easier.
The only ones I really worry about are Funnel-Web spiders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australi...), as they hide so well, particularly around swimming pools (they like damp soil), and can be aggressive.
I always let spiders live. They eat the other bugs and that's fine with me.
We had a very mild winter and pretty good spring and summer, so now there are loads of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegenari... crawling around the houses and they're bigger than usual. As the females didn't die off during winter and had a lot of food in the rest of the year. I usually encounter 5 or so indoors in the fall season, seen at least 2 times as many so far. Lots of musquitos too.
At least we all agree it was caused by climate change. Al Gore never used a "mutated spider plague chart" in his film though. Has anyone got a link to one?
Tom wrote: "I couldn't find a chart but I did find this http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/ima..."Yeah thanks for the visual. Can't un-see that. Looks like a three pounder.
Gard wrote: "At least we all agree it was caused by climate change. Al Gore never used a "mutated spider plague chart" in his film though. Has anyone got a link to one?"Yes, even the climate change deniers wouldn't have an argument to beat a mutant spider plague chart.
Though unless they're crawling on my face in the middle of the night, I am definitely in the 'spiders are cute' camp. (Oh, except for the genetically modified goat-spiders: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-envir.... Alright, I guess they're cute now; but what happens in a couple of generations, after the frog DNA has had time to do its thing?)
Yeah, they normally make nice webs on my back window and my front porch. In past summers I welcomed it because I'm near a small creek and there are a lot of mosquitoes in the neighbourhood. But now they're everywhere. The spiders are making webs on my car while it's parked. Too far, arachnids, too far! Our social contract did not include automobiles!
Joe Informatico wrote: "Too far, arachnids, too far! Our social contract did not include automobiles! "
I hear ya. I have one living behind the side mirror on my car. I wreck his webs everyday but I haven't been able to flush the bugger out.
I hear ya. I have one living behind the side mirror on my car. I wreck his webs everyday but I haven't been able to flush the bugger out.
Matthew wrote: "I hear ya. I have one living behind the side mirror on my car. I wreck his webs everyday but I haven't been able to flush the bugger out."I might still have one there. If so, I might try using a can of compressed air tomorrow and see if that works.
I hate spiders, always have. I've managed to come to a truce with them because I know they're beneficial. However, walking into even a thread of spider webbing sends chill up my spine and I feel phantom spider webs even after it's gone. Does anyone remember the episode of either Twilight Zone or Night Gallery where a man washes a spider down the drain and it keeps coming back, larger every time? At the end, it's the size of a pony and it eats him. Yeah, scariest TV show ever. I tried to find it on YouTube to share but had no luck.
I hate spiders, always have. I've managed to come to a truce with them because I know they're beneficial. However, walking into even a thread of spider webbing sends chill up my spine and I feel phantom spider webs even after it's gone. Does anyone remember the episode of either Twilight Zone or Night Gallery where a man washes a spider down the drain and it keeps coming back, larger every time? At the end, it's the size of a pony and it eats him. Yeah, scariest TV show ever. I tried to find it on YouTube to share but had no luck.
I hate spiders too! But so long as they're on the other side of the room to me, I tend to be okay... having said that if it's night time and there's a spider on my ceiling; I do not sleep and watch it ALL night, and as soon as it's light out, I always move to the sofa downstairs to sleep xD weird habit I have that spiders have caused me to do.On an added note; spiders in Japan are 99% deadly, HUGE and always make their houses on balconies and just outside your front door *cringe*. I had to be careful when I was living there as soon as it became spring and summer.
LOL. While visiting my mom in AZ this last weekend, my 9 yr-old son came into our room at 2am terrified because he saw a huge grass spider on the wall. Sure enough, the thing was massive. Wife was completely creeped out as well. I killed it and it was very much like something out of an alien movie.As far as killing or not killing spiders: when they're in the house, they usually get killed. Outside, however, they're always left alone and often observed with fascination. Especially those giant garden spiders that spin those enormous webs! Apparently, my 9 yr old has no problem getting up close and personal to them outside during the day. :-)
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."What I really need is more dragonflies. I have so many mosquitoes here that I need the "wolves of the air" to hunt them into oblivion.
I also live in AZ, and the whole summer my shed has been spider city. To date, already killed at least 4 (pretty large) black widows, as well as several other spiders of indeterminate species.
Literally just got back from retrieving my fat little Chihuahua from the woods and I must have walked through a dozen spider webs spanning open areas across trees. A couple were so substantial I think they were trying to catch moose.
At least the spiders can be seen....It's the invisible spiders you have to worry about.
You jest, but there are so-called "glass spiders" who are mostly clear and very hard to see. Then there are spiders which look like ants and some which look like leaves.So, yeah... sleep well, everyone!
I couldn't help myself seeing a post about spiders . I had to indirectly plug my own horror series "Invisible Spiders"Bad I know...
Trike,While I love dragonflies, it's bats you really need. They do an awesome job going after Mosquitos. Yes they are a pain if they get inside, but set up a few bat houses outside, and watch your mosquito population decrease. And they are also cool to watch when flying around in the evening,
Now I hear chickens are what you need for ticks....
Joseph, that is SO pretty! It's like an icicle spider!I have been disappointed. All the this talk of giant spiders, and the most I've seen at my place were two money spiders and another a little smaller than a penny. That's it.
It was one of the more memorable bits from the movie Krull. As I recall, it was guarding the Oracle and there were very specific rules about how to get to to & from the Oracle without running afoul of it.
As much as I love SciFi films, I'm surprised even in myself that I have not seen Krull. That picture looks good.
John wrote: "John Nevets (Nevets) | 223 comments Trike,While I love dragonflies, it's bats you really need. They do an awesome job going after Mosquitos. Yes they are a pain if they get inside, but set up a few bat houses outside, and watch your mosquito population decrease. And they are also cool to watch when flying around in the evening,
Now I hear chickens are what you need for ticks...."
I live in New Hampshire and unfortunately almost all the bats here are now dead from that fungus that's wiping out eastern bat populations. That's one of the reasons the mosquitoes have been so bad the past 5-6 years: the bat population has been destroyed. The bats that are surviving the plague are barely hanging on, and since they don't actually live in NH but commute from other states, they simply aren't migrating during the summers.
We do have quite a few wild turkeys to help keep the tick population under control, but their numbers are plummeting as well. A neighbor of mine keeps domestic turkeys that clean out her yard, but they have no idea that cars are bad and keep wandering into the street, so they aren't good for loaning out.
