apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Reminds me of cleaning the Black Widows from our garage in the Central Valley when I was a kid - Yuck.

That is oddly cute... ok, sort of. Most spiders survive our dustbuster just fine, by the way... don't know about the babies, though.

You get top marks in my book for your relocation philosophy. I do the same thing. Roaches and mosquitos I can kill, spiders I can not.

My pest control guy told me spiders are good. Only natural enemy of roaches. So in NYC, its good to welcome them in (in limited numbers of course!)

How not to hurt spiders, but keep them out of your home:

1 quart of vinegar 1 tablespoon warmed up coconut oil (asian grocery for cheaps) 1 tablespoon dishwashing soap (emulsifies the solution and keeps coconut oil from solidifying again) - swirl around, put in a spray bottle, and off you go!

I haven't sprayed IN my house, just all around the window and door frames outside. It lasts about 4 weeks or until a heavy rainstorm, and then needs a repeat spray. The amount of oil in the spray shouldn't cause damage, but the acid in the vinegar might. Test a small area first if you're concerned. Spiders won't cross the barrier, letting you keep your house to yourself.

I love this stuff!

give them an inch...

I use the cup and paper method myself. Can't kill them ever since I found out that a trickster figure in Lakota mythology is Iktomi (spider), considered both good and bad and can warn of danger. Who knows what might happen to me if I squashed a trickster!

In Germany it is very very bad luck to kill a spider. And who needs that?

My dog inevitably controls spiders for me. We moved in to this place a little over a month ago, and got said dog shortly after that. We seem to get quite a bit of the same spider: not huge, but not tiny black ones, and sometimes the occasional brown one of the same size. I'm very arachnophobic (and yes the picture at the top nearly gave me a heart attack!), so I am not up for searching to see what kinds of spiders we have. The dog just goes after ANY bug; flying, crawling, anything. He gets it, plays with it, and eats it. We get quite a few of these spiders, but he always gets them for me.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who co-habitates with spiders. I grew up on a beach and it was the spiders that helped keep down the mosquitoes. Each time I find one we have a chat about house rules, they stay on their side and I don't kill them. Easy and very rarely do they break the rules. My son finds it funny that I talk to the spiders.

Roaches on the other hand are grounds for burning the house down and moving. Yuck!

Sorry if I have mentioned this before, but I have the greatest bug catcher contraption ever: the bug vaccum.

http://www.amazon.com/Summit-Financial-Product-Inc-3701/dp/B000302AFK/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1211924522&sr=11-1

You suck them up the barrel, and then you can release them outside, unharmed. I love it. It's actually for kids, but it sure beats the jar and postcard method, which always freaked me out.

I lived in an artist colony in Florida with a bunch of Tibetan monks (long story...). Anyway, the colony was also an ecological preserve, and the bugs in that place were HUGE. These terrifying ping pong ball-sized spiders made it into my room pretty frequently. I would kill them from a safe distance with my floor mat and an umbrella. One day, a couple of monks and I were hanging out, and I spotted one. I immediately grabbed my extermination tools when one of the monks looked at me and asked "And what has that spider done to you?" It was the best guilt trip ever. Even better than any my Catholic mother could hand down. I haven't killed a spider in eight years.

i get lots (mini-battalions) of spiders and black ants every spring. i leave the spiders alone for the most part and they eat most of the ants. it does get annoying though...seems to be more ants than spiders. i'm considering sprinkling cayenne pepper around the perimeter of my place. any other suggestions?

I don't know whether the myth about swallowing 8 / 9/ million spiders in your sleep is true but my big brother was living in some very nasty digs in Manchester when he was a student and once woke up to find a cockroach peacefully enjoying the warmth of his top lip. He goes mental mental when he sees one now. Thinking about it he has just moved to Dubai tho so good luck to him on that one!

Spiders are more likely to respect your personal space than cockroaches so I say keep the spiders if they keep the other nasties away!

In Australia Daddy Long Legs spiders are your friends. They eat other spiders slightly larger than themselves. Put up with the harmless spiders so you don't get killed by a flesh rotting or fit causing spider he could have eaten.

My dad always said it's bad luck to kill spiders, too (he's german). Interesting. And my mom never let us, either - said they eat mosquitoes.

We had a spider who lived in the top corner of our shower near the window when I was a kid. His name was Herman. I still can't kill spiders, even now!

I've always had no problem co-habitating with spiders although recently I was bitten at a friend's house by what turned out to be a brown recluse and spent four days and five thousand dollars (with insurance!) in the hospital with a gaping hole in my leg, so now I'm becoming a little wary of the ever-present webs in the corners of my ceiling. Despite the experience I still don't really mind the spiders at all to be honest, but maybe in the future I'll try the vinegar / dish soap / coconut oil concoction. Lately I've had roaches (which I do mind) show up after five years of having lived in the same place with not a one and it's prompted me to spray at least in the short term, though I feel awfully guilty and am hoping to find a better natural remedy.

Oh, also:

Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

By Issa, translated by Robert Haas. It's one of my favorites...

I get the "do-no-kill-innocent-creatures" part, but unfortunately I'm arachnopobic. I also read somewhere that if there are a lot of spiders in your house, it is not a good sign because it means there is high humidity.

I'm not horribly arachnophobic, but that picture squicks me out. Notice to all spiders: do not start a family in my apartment. Trust me, this is for your benefit as well as mine. Thank you.

I echo Erika in Seattle's sentiments: Spiders, moving into my house is a death sentence, no exceptions.

Oddly enough, roaches aren't that huge of a deal to me. That isn't to say that I won't kill them, I'll just be in less of a hurry.

yah i have to agree- we've had a few GIANT creepy crawlies in our apartment. though i dont mind a big daddy long legs every now and again, i cant have them hanging around my sleeping body. eep!

when i was younger my big sister had to babysit for this family that had multiple spider clusters around the house. being arachnophobic, i had to go with her as her "protector". needless to say we sat on the edge of the couch clutching each other until the mother came home. we never babysat again!

so while yes a few spiders can symbolize a healthy home, too many make it too scary to live there anyway! and roaches... dont even get me started...

Eeeeek. I don't care if my bf kills them, or peacably removes them, as long as I don't have to see them. My love for all creatures hypocritically disappears when the spiders move in. Except for the one time a tiny little baby longlegs took up residence next to the kitchen sink... he was so small that I pitied and allowed him to stay a while.

Poison spiders would get the heave-ho (not that they are an issue here) but I let the rest of them be. I don't think it has to do with my name but perhaps. My cat occasionally interacts with them for a little recreation.

Spider bites can be irritating even if they aren't poisonous so I tend to keep them swept up in the bedroom (the ones I have congregate mostly in upper corners of the rooms but one will drop down now and then to look into things in the lower regions).

They help with the pantry moths too.

"These terrifying ping pong ball-sized spiders made it into my room pretty frequently."

CaseyB -

Your story reminds me of a particular visit to my Sister's home in Virginia. My nephew, who was 3 at the time, walked with me into the garden and pointed out an enourmous and menacing looking yellow and black garden spider reclining in her web amongst the bushes. Very calmly he said, "See? Spider. Eats Bugs."

any uninvited visitor who can't bring a bottle of wine is either under 21 or of the more-than-two-legged variety... and i have little tolerance for either showing up without invitation.

i killed a GIANT spider that dropped onto my head from the ceiling a few weeks ago and my self-righteous visiting friend gave me the longest lecture. i found one later and offered for her to take it home with her before i exterminated. she declined.

I had that picture in real life last summer. Those are the spiders that were eating the mosquitoes. I noticed when they dropped like little paratroopers. I caught them with my feather duster then put it outside. I have a new place that is over run by may flies and ants. My spiders in the corners are helping out.
eucalyptus oil, citronella oil and cedar wood oil have been keeping the bugs away. I've been spray a mix of those plus alcohol to keep the buggies off of the counter, walls and furniture. (also keeps fleas off of pets)

just recently spiders have been everywhere. i found one on my arm, my roommate had one on hers, and they have been near my bed lately! im so grossed out, i keep feeling like im gonna have an anxiety attack. i just dont know how to not feel that way.. they are freaking disgusting.

ive never seen spiders in any of my apartments until this one. thank god we are moving in a week.

This happened to me recently except that instead of remaining quietly in a corner to themselves (in this case hidden on the top of my heater), they dispersed themselves all over my ceiling. Imagine my horror when at around 11pm at night I looked up and realized that the ceiling of my small studio apartment was covered with at least 60 (I counted) baby spiders!
I understand that spiders are very beneficial, but I had to have my boyfriend vacuum them up. I am incredibly afraid of spiders (except single full-grown daddy long legs), and the only thing that could have made this scene more horrifying to me would be if they had suddenly started skydiving from the ceiling. Even worse was that there were more babies climbing around on the ceiling when I woke up the next morning. Eek!

*shiver.*

That picture gives me the heebie jeebies!

brenjay, we had a kitchen spider named Herman a few years back. Herman must be a common spider name. His brother Nacho hung out (literally) in the living room.

I can stomach cohabitating with daddy longlegs, but I draw the line at huntsmen as big as my hands. I know they're harmless, but the thought of a big hairy spider crawling across my face in my sleep freaks me out.

Buy a terrarium for them :)

Before i did not have any problem with spiders. They didnt desturb me, and I didnt desturb them. That was until the biggest one I ever seen decided to move in to my bed room window. I was chocked, but let it be. Even if it gave me the creeps. A few days later they were two hanging out there, on top of each other!! And they had made a big web covering a big part of my window. Since I didnt want to share my bed room with hundreds of baby spiders I decided it was time to act. I sprayed some water on them, thinking they wouldnt like it and maybe, maybe start moving themself. But no. So I decided to try the jar and book trick. I would rather have had someone to kill them for me, sorry to say. But since no one was arround I had to solve it myself. And i was to horrified too kill them, they were HUGH . Anyway, I caught the slightly smaller one (the male i guess), but the other slipt away and fell to the ground (lived on 11/2 floor). I could even hear when she caught the ground, she was that big. Brrrrrrrr, gives me the chills just thinking about it. Since then i freeze when i see a spider bigger then an ant. Spiders and I are NOT friends. It was this kind of spider...

http://images.google.se/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bioresurs.uu.se/myller/stad/stad_bild/stor_husspindel.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bioresurs.uu.se/myller/stad/stor_husspindel.htm&h=300&w=400&sz=20&hl=fr&start=3&um=1&tbnid=7IBw_kEgLB3wQM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstor%2Bhusspindel%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dfr

Can't be sure from the pic but these look like vibrating spiders to me. They're called that because when you startle them they sometimes wiggle furiously until they look invisible. It's really neat. I used to live in a house for 8yrs that constantly had a few of them always hanging out. Luckily they are totally harmless. BTW I have a tarantula so I might have a different idea of harmless.

I don't mind certain ones that stay in their own corner...I had one named Stan for a while. He was cool, I just don't want the wandering types. I do feel bad when I kill them, but my boyfriend says that if our sizes were reversed, a spider wouldn't think twice about eating me. That makes me feel better, but I still apologize to them as I suck them up with the vacuum.

eek! eek! eek!

I had a family of spiders come out of my fireplace after living in an apt. for just under a year, the next day I moved out.

When spiders are bigger than your dog, its no good :/

My dad calls all spiders "Jeremy" and addresses each one (as in "Good morning Jeremy, and how are we today?") as if it were the only spider called Jeremy in the whole world before moving it outside. Having a posh name takes the edge off their creepy, robotic scuttle.

My Dad is from rural Ireland and has little time for bugs in general. All other insects are members of the nameless hoards of beasts which must be twatted on sight with a rolled up newspaper. His Mum used to love spraying wasps with aerosols to kill them, and pouring bioling water on ants. The farming instinct never dies, even in English suburbia.

I've killed many a spider in my time, but now I'm trying to let them live because I know they kill the other bugs. If I had a whole tribe of them though, all bets would be off. Catching them and taking them outside has never occurred to me. Now I know why I have such bad luck!

As far as ants go, I tried cayenne and it didn't work. Then I tried borax, and that didn't work either. I resorted to those ant trap hotels and they were gone in a day and a half.

I have no problem just simply killing spiders in the home.

I don't mind a spider here or there, but I HATE cobwebs in our country house--go away for a week, and it looks like a haunted house. Now I use Bug Stop http://www.spectracide.com/ProductCategories/IndoorInsecticide/BugStopHomeInsectKillerRTU/ -- spray it in the corners and under furniture maybe twice a year, works well. (Probably terrible stuff, but I only use tiny squirts).

Thank you for not killing them they are important to the environment just outside the house not inside. I love that picture.

hissingsissing... i need to know... what part of the country were those terrifying giants in???

My mom's garage has been given over to old apartment stuff (two of mine, one of my brothers) so when I go down to look for a book or something, I always find those tiny baby spiders, usually dead, in webs all over. My fake trees... I don't even know how to clean those!!

She was worried I'd bring back roaches in my move from Cali, I'm more worried about what hitchhikers I'll have from The Garage The Spiders Ate!