pholcidae/cellar spiders - care advice (picture warning)

[MadameButterface]

this sounds nuts, but if you are not a fan of the big hairy twats currently running around like maniacs giving everyone heart failure then I STRONGLY advise you to make friends with these babes, the spindly leggy bois who just hang around upside down in corners minding their own business. you may not think they look up to the job, but they eat the fat hairy fuckers. since I learned this, I have stopped escorting them off the premises and can report a downturn in heart stopping OH FUCKING JESUS FUCK style encounters.

anyway. so in the course of making friends with my enemy's enemy, I have found that the gentle, nice pholcidae spider is an attentive mother, staying with her babies until they have their first moult. I have one on my attic stairs who has 12 hatchlings with her. last time this happened (front room, bookcase) the mother was stuck there over a week with her babies and I started to get worried about her eating and drinking and so on. so, does anyone have any advice on how I can support her post partum (or whatever you call it for spiders). or should I just leave them all be? I want to encourage them, they're my house spider death squad. TIA

ah fuck I never put the picture. Here she is, total babe:

I'd just leave her to it mate.... what do they drink anyway?? .... maybe gin?
I don't reckon she will be breast feeding them so I'd just let her crack on with doing what spider mums do in their spare time 😁

You want to know how you should support a post-partum spider?

That might be one of the most mental things I've read on here. I think I quite like it.

Spindly leggy bois 😂.

No advice but I love them too. They’re utter babes who keep me from fleeing rooms shrieking. We’ve an absolute colony of them in our current house and I think if I ever moved I’d take them with me.

Post partum spider . I’d say leave her to it, I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. I have two of these spiders in my lounge, I was going to evict them but won’t now I’ve read your post. Won’t you get overrun with them though or will you evict the babies?

John Lewis voucher?

John Lewis voucher - Roar!!!!!! 😂

@ John Lewis voucher

I might see if she needs a white noise app downloading, help her get them to sleep a bit better.

@NotExactlyHappyToHelp I'm glad I'm not their only fan. I would definitely take a cohort with me if I ever moved.

@serenmoon I normally wait till the babies get a bit bigger then I redistribute them around the house to get maximum protection. always thinking.

laugh it on up motherfuckers, if you'd ever seen one of these take down one of the ridiculous INSANIO ones you'd be right here with me. they are nothing short of heroic.

John Lewis voucher?

This is bloody brilliant. Made me properly guffaw

I’ve got actual photographic evidence of a leggy babe taking down a big boi. Please excuse the shitty cracked paintwork courtesy of delightful couldn’t decorate if their lives depended on it previous occupants.

We have cellar spiders and allow them to stay. They don't scuttle around freaking you out and are pretty unthreatening like their hairy bastard kin (who they love to attack and eat - DH and I watched a hairy run around the ceiling for half an hour running from our 4 cellar spiders that kept trying to capture it!)
They generally like damp homes if possible but will happily live and breed anywhere. I am terrified of spiders but these guys are quite tolerable.
From a distance.

"Big Mama" lived with us happily for years. She had 31 babies one year but they all moved out. Spider Uni? Arachnid boarding school perhaps. We never saw them again.

NotExactly that's what I'm talking about!! they don't get the kudos they deserve.

@Cindersdonegood, I'm fretting about Big Mama's babies now. I hope they're all just chilling under the kitchen kickboards or the bath panel or something, fighting the good fight against all the ludicrous hairy bois, who are made out of ACTUAL NIGHTMARES

I told DH he must never move the ‘friendly spiders’ as I call them. I’m really frightened of spiders normally so he can’t really get his head around it. The other morning, I woke up to find a dead hairy fucker wrapped up by one of our spindly pals. I said to DH ‘see? Friendly! They do kill the big ones!’ and he wandered off muttering ‘yeah...really friendly aren’t they. Bloody carnivores’

Oh dear, I hoovered one of those earlier - didn’t mean to, just wrong place wrong time

Maybe it’ll find it’s way out...?

Fuck!! Why has this gem never been shared before?!!

I will forever respect the leggy babes! They've never bothered me too much (though they still give me heebie-jeebies).

I found an OH FUCKING JESUS FUCK spider in a tumbler the other day. She was the size of my palm... scrunched up.

OH is equally shit scared of them but I will tell him to befriend the leggy babes 🎉

So they're spindly legged girl spiders? Oh shit - they're all called Steve in this house (not crazy, it's alliterative Steve the Spider). I need to rename.

But HOW do they eat them? They’re hardly made of anything and look really light and flimsy. I only ever knew they eat the big ones from on here. So I leave them alone now. Still didn’t appreciate being woken up a few months back from one crawling on my face though.

I always called the spindly ones Smackheads. They just hang around in one place all day looking skinny and not doing owt. We get lots, and not too many FUCK FUCK HELP ME JESUS ones.
Must be why.
I will stop helping them to "rehab" (out the window) and let them do their thing.

But HOW do they eat them?

are you sure you want to know? it's pretty fucking gnarly.

when big boi prey is dead/paralysed from the venom and all wrapped up, spindly babe slurps his innards out of his helpless exo skeleton like it's a fancy cocktail before cutting free his wizened corpse where it lands on my hoodie hanging on the back of the door and makes me shite my kecks

UniversalTruth Stevie? As in Nicks?

lol at smackheads

they are honestly the BEST thing. better than conkers, better than cats (who are either wilfully ignorant or too thick to understand pointing and the words THERE, THERE, KILL IT NOW), better than peppermint oil

altho the one who lives in my tin cupboard and sometimes runs over the back of my hand when I'm foraging better watch herself

I love this thread! They are Charlottes in this house and we nurture them.

I found a giant one in the kitchen the other day, we are having work done and I didn’t want her to get hurt so set her free in the living room (they are all girls, obviously). Even the kids tolerate them in their rooms, every other kind is evicted.

They do indeed eat the big scary ones, it’s a thing of beauty to see!

I just thought we needed an upbeat spider thread

I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate this time of year, it makes me feel sick, the dread, the stomach churning, the way I have passed on my completely irrational fear to my dc, the way it makes me feel so stupid, hate it

it feels so good to have the leggy babes on my side, they're my girl gang and they've got my back