to kill all the spiders?

[bessarabiantiger]

We live in the country, we're very lucky with our house and we've been here two years. There's a lake on the property and with lakes come mosquito hoardes (fine, live and let live, we knew about this when ee took the place, and with mosquito hoardes come spiders.

I am alright with most types of spider, I allow Huntsman (? Spindly legged) in every room as they're no bother and keep the mossies down when we have the windows open. Brown recluse get ejected with a glass & cardboard or eaten by the cat.

This year we have a problem with false widows and a kind we've never seen before. They are awful. Striped and with extra long front legs, they shamble across the ceiling as if they're drunk & often fall in your drink/dinner/hair.

We now have around 80 of the fuckers in the kitchen. They are making nests. For many people this wouldn't even be an issue. But me being me I've said to myself, well the windows are open, they aren't scaring me on purpose (even after the night I walked into the kitchen without turning the lights on and had one who was making a web land on my face. ARGH!) Etc. Etc.

We've used every natural repellant going. From plug-in spider scarers (knew they were bullshit but was at wits end last sept) to conkers, peppermint oil, spider hoover, removing them all outside (shudder. That was a horrible day) only to find a new gang there in the morning.

After me and DH being bitten this week (him on the neck, me on the hand WHILST ASLEEP IN BED! Hand swelled up for the next 24 hours, yes, it was a spider, found it crawling down my leg) I have finally and very reluctantly bought spider poison.

I am hoping someone can offer a better solution before I have to use it. DS has mild asthma and am worried about the effect on him (we will evacuate for the day after use) and it's an aersol as well as a poison. It sounds silly, but I've only ever used aerosol twice- the ozone layer was so drummed into me at school it feels akin to pooping straight down a whales blow hole!

AIBU to kill the spiders so they stop biting us? Has anyone got any other solution?

We break webs and remove visible offenders bi-daily BTW.

I wonder if I could ship them in balloons. Or those Christmas baubles that are clear and you can put things in...Essentially, how many festivities can I ruin by putting spiders in things?

Lemon if they're what I think they are (long pointy bottom? Look like they're filled with juice? Slick greyish fur?) then they are Woodlouse (Eric) spiders and you need to punch them in the face.

This is almost as brilliant an idea as the time I decided Londoners needed an eco-friendly garden tidy solution. I called it Rent-a-Goat.

Didn't get further than the jingle-writing stage and naming the goats (Jeremy Claypole and Miss Poppov, naturally) but I still maintain it's a fabulous idea.

That's the bastards. I do not partake in spider punching, but I am currently looking for one of those little extending boxing gloves to use instead I may be thinking of cartoons.

I like the seasonal tie-ins. I'm thinking easter eggs. I'm thinking love hearts. I'm thinking snow globes.

You need Dr Seuss for extending boxing gloves.

Spider: would you like me in a box? Would you like me with a...

THWACK!

I'm thunder laughing at the tie-ins. In my mind you have a powerpoint presentation and pointy stick.

After you deploy your boxing glove you must say [John Wayne voice]: I do not like you here or there, I do not like you anywhere.

I was rudely awoken in the small hours last night by a spider CRAWLING UP MY ARM. I was in the middle of a bizarre dream about being on a boat, then my brain registered a sensation on my arm and I thought maybe my younger daughter had snuck into my bedroom and was stroking my arm to wake me up. A split second later I correctly identified the sensation and was franticly swiping at my arm.

Then of course there was no way I was getting back to sleep so I lay in bed a quivering wreck for a while (knowing the fucker was somewhere on the floor, or possibly in the duvet if I hadn't managed to get rid of it).

Got up and switched the ensuite light on, and there it was, now swinging merrily by the headboard. Not far from my head AAARRGHHHH

Fortunately my very lovely and patient husband (who obviously hadn't been allowed to go to sleep during this horrific event either) squashed it. It wasn't as big as the ones on this thread but it wasn't small either and seriously, it took a long time to forget the feeling of little legs running up my arm. I'm shuddering even now as I type this.

I did eventually fall back asleep, I have no idea how. My husband has always done a spider-check under his pillows before he goes to bed, I'm going to have to start doing the same. That and spraying the entire room with something toxic every night [sob]

Hmm, maybe I need to sleep with boxing gloves on.

Or alternatively hermetically sealed in a casket a la Ripley in Aliens.

I've had the arm crawling, and got bitten. It got into my bed and bitted me. So I empathise.

However, what I really want to know is what happened on the boat?

Gawd, biting. Ok, you win. That's just wrong.

I hate spiders. I've made a pact: they can go on the ceiling, or on the floor. Anything in between the two is off-limits ESPECIALLY MY FUCKING BED

They don't seem to have agreed to the pact

I really couldn't explain the boat it made about as much sense as any dream ever does.

Was it a little boat or a big boat?

Do you want a balloon full of Charlottes?

I think it was a rowing boat.

I did have a power point presentation and a stick and an American accent and a day cigar.

Now I'm confused. Lemon, are you controlling dreams? And was that dream about my rowing boat? Did we accidentally send a spider to someone's bed via their dream?

That is some heavy shit right there.

I'm confused too. For the record, it was a two-storey boat (yes, it had storeys like a building). There was another, three-storey boat nearby towering over the boat I was on. No idea what any of that means, something deeply Freudian no doubt but as far as I'm aware unconnected with hairy eight-legged fuckers.

Bess thank you for your kind (?) offer of a balloon full of Charlottes but I'd really rather not tackle the spider problem with ... more spiders

Sorry for the confusion. If it helps, I am also confused .

I want to know what a day cigar is. And is there an evening counterpart? Does an evening cigar wear pearls?

june I think you wanted to get to the thirdstorey boat so as to escape a tidal wave of spiders.

I think I need some sleep.

Bess, do you think some Charlottes deployed in my garden would get rid of my clothes-peg-dwelling bastards? I walked into a web this morning and once I had recovered and got rid of web from my face I went to hang the washing out an one of them ran out of a clothes peg and up my arm! Again.

No biting at least but they are growing to quite immense proportions (in excess of my able-to-cope-with scale) and I'm tiring of playing fucking spider roulette with every new piece of clothing to hang up.

Its quite ingenious really - the spring inside the peg is the perfect camouflage.

Once, when I was still living at my parents' house, I was woken by one of my ceiling spiders dropping onto the eiderdown. I actually heard it land. (I kept them on the ceiling to take out the mozzies and wasps) I had to put the light on, find it, and return it to the wall so it could go back to the ceiling (it did).

Wasn't anywhere near as big as the one Steve the Trainer had though.

Charlotte babies are naturally airborne though, aren't they? Well a lot are. I once had baby spiders hatch behind my wing mirror (UK) - they were the most beautiful pale green and were teeny tiny. They all flew off as the car went along though.

Morning!

hudyer I don't think Charlottes do very well outside in this weather. I was reading about them yesterday, and discovered they like the warm, and their surname is Falangy. All of them.

thumb our whole house gets covered in parachutes every year. If we have sun it's very pretty watching them fly across the lake & totally worth having to scrub the entire outside of the house afterwards...

WARNING: My Husband reminded me this morning of the best insect we've ever encountered & emailed me a picture I took (using his phone, because if it jumped & I dropped the phone I didn't want it to be mine).

Actually might not be an insect. Let's settle on Hellbeast shall we?

This year my Husband was working in Mexico, and England was cold, so we all buggered off to stay in the jungle for a month. We stayed in a splendid traditional place and got to hang out with Turtles & Toucans.

After a long day Snorking I decided to jump in the shower, and whilst merrily washing away sea water from my hair I looked left and found this guy.

Now being in someone elses shower without asking is just rude. So I exited (hastily) and announced to The Boy & Husband that I found a really cool animal who needs help getting back outside! (didn't want The Boy going to bed thinking these guys were everywhere).

Having not glanced long enough prior to exiting the shower, until the time came to photgraph it for our wildlife project (the things I do for that boy) I had not noticed the fucking boxing gloves it was wearing. It began merrily flattening itself into crevices in our rustic shower wall with Husband encouraging it into a pot, and I used the time to look up what it might be.

google search: spider with fists claws

oh goody! A WHIP SCORPION.

Apparently neither Arthur nor Martha, this thing is basically a mash-up of all your nightmares. Enormous? Check! Long wibbly antennae? Check! FUCKING PINCERS?!? CHECKITY CHECK CHECK CHECK!

Happily Husband managed to evict it & The Boy was thrilled to have a picture. I was just very pleased to get back in the shower. Armed with a fork.

Christ Bess that thing is horrific. Nothing would have stopped me running out the shower screaming for my life.

I was telling a friend of mine about your sausage eating Kestrel. She is rural too but her wildlife just eat each other rather than sausages. Her Sparrowhawk sits on the rose arbour waiting for the fat wood pigeons to waddle up to it. Her spiders apparently are apparently eating MICE.

That is one lazy-ass Sparrowhawk.

Argh! The size of the Hellbeast is making me come out in a cold sweat.

Even without something to use as scale - bugle or similar - you can tell its massive. Look at how long the legs at the side are! Its more like a wingspan.

Up to 60cm for an Arsless whip scorpion. Yes. 60cm.

There is not a bugle in the world big enough for that much Fuck That. I'd need a Viking horn. And I don't have one of those yet.

This guy wasn't that big, a bit smaller than my worst nightmare.

Bess - that "thing" has brought me out in a cold sweat as well. Fuck I hate scorpions, and that doesn't even look like one to start with!!
Narsty, that's what it is. Proper narsty.

Did you look up camel spiders yet? They're not exactly spiders either, they're a scorpion type jobby as well, thankfully not found in Australia