Massive spider in lounge, shut the door and sealed with masking tape last night,now what?

[lightclock]

What do I do now? Never enter the lounge again?

More than one ex of mine squealed like little girls if they saw a spider. I love spiders, never destroy an active web and have a significantly lesser fly problem than my neighbours.

You do realise that there will be anything from 10 to 50 spiders in your house at any time @lightclock ? The One in the lounge will have just gone back under the skirting/floorboards.

No, it will crawl out! Just get a spider vacuum from Amazon and let it go outside.

Don't burn the house down - fire service are really stretched at the minute. You could get a load of cement delivered and pour it through the window til it's full to the top?

I have a spider catcher, sort of pyramid shaped on a pole. The bottom slides part way off. Put over the spider, slide bottom underneath and spider is trapped. Does sometimes work on walls but you have to think about where the bottom is in when you put it over the spider.

I preferred the idea of this to the turkey baster looking one, thought this might be more traumatic for the spider.

You’re fortunate not to have to deal with any phobias, I presume.

You've clearly no choice but to burn the house down 🤷‍♀️

You're just going to have to sell the house, OP. Hope you weren't attached to anything in that room

“I say we take off and nuke it from space, it’s the only way to be sure”…

I'm terrified of the huge ones too. I live alone and use a spider catcher to remove them which is an absolute godsend as long as the spider is in a reachable place!

I second peppermint spray (if you don't have pets). Or get a pet cellar spider to eat the hairy ones.

I also have a horror of spiders. I don't want them dead, I just want them out but can't even go near them.

I wish soneone would set up a service like Uber Eats but for diffusing spiders. I'd happily pay! Good luck.

I once had to get the postman to come in and evict one for me. Husband had already left for work, I was just on my way out and couldn't bear the thought of not knowing where it had gone. It was huge. Even the postman quailed a bit when he saw it. Said, blimey that's a bit bugger.

These contraptions are brilliant!

OP I have a phobia too, although I'm not quite as bad as I used to be. Taping up a door may sound bonkers to anyone who doesn't have our phobia but I totally get it. Methods I've used before include:

Getting my neighbour round to remove the beast.

Home made scoop:
#1 an empty litre juice carton with the end cut off to form a scoop shape and the other end stabbed onto a long handled meat fork.
#2 a plastic flower pot sellotaped securely to the end of a broom handle. This one was used to remove a monster from the bath; bathroom window opened first, as wide as it would go, then scoop, lift and chuck in one smooth motion. And when I say chuck I do indeed mean flower pot, broom and all right into the garden.

Trapping the horror under a glass, drawing arrows on several pieces of paper and arranging them to form a path leading from the back door into the lounge and ending with a note by the glass saying Spider Under Here. Got up in the morning to find the arrows leading from the bottom of the stairs to the glass and a note from my DM saying Spider All Gone.

These days I use one of the thingies with bristles above if I'm feeling brave enough to deal with it myself (I prefer these because you can still maintain some distance between you and the abomination. The plastic ones with a sliding trapdoor are ok if the thing is on a wall and you can rotate the contraption to slide the trapdoor shut, but if Boris is on the floor you have to manually slide the door closed which means nearly touching the damned spider. NO!) or get DH or DDog in on the act.

@LakieLady I wonder if there's a business opportunity here? I could be like an emergency service for arachnophobes.

Excellent thinking! Let me know if you'd like a business partner to go on Dragons Den with, since I already carry out this function for all members of my household anyway 😆.

When I was 18, a giant spider appeared in the living room whilst my parents were on holiday. I shut the door and didn't go in there again. Two days later, it appeared in the bathroom. Luckily, my parents came home the next day.

I am slightly better with them now, but still haven't got over the large one which was sitting on my pillow when I went to bed one night a couple of years ago. I still check now that nothing's there.

Years ago I got the Tesco delivery guy to remove one. I was so grateful!

Accept your new arachnid overlord, it’s his house now! 🕷️

I haven't ever seen a false widow!

Oh I completely get it. I would rather go and sit in the car than sit in a room with a huge spider. I have tried to get over my agoraphobia but am still as bad as I was as a child. I am now in my 60s and still have to check every corner, Etc when entering a room. I have tried every device and spray known to man. I have bows of conkers in every room and conkers lined up above the architrave of every door. Spider season will soon be upon us again. Halloween is hell as I can't even look at plastic spiders.

But there isn't anything in 'the air' in my home.

That’s not how phobias work.

You’d hate my house, I’ve got a nice fat spider who lives in the kitchen just above the window, I feed it swatted flies.

Do you have a cat/ can you borrow a neighbours cat?

depends where you are in the world