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.

Love your name spiderlight

Fatty is right - its Daddy Longlegs having just googled it. Or you could use Crane Flies if you are taking about the flying critters as opposed to the 8 legged Harvestmen (now forever known as Charlottes)

I am very late to this thread but thought You might like to see my spider Family, I think I shared this on MN a few months back but can not remember. Anyway, I actually thought at first it was thunder flies caught in her web till I took a closer look!

Just to say, though I know that this thread has moved on since the OP - I find that spiders dislike Flash spray with Bleach if that would be any better than using the spider poison?

Shoot to kill, and wash your walls at the same time

large I would have taken a flamethrower to that!

Too many spiders..

Love this thread, brilliant way to while away a boring day at work!

Speaking of work, we usually have hundreds of Charlottes in our Depot (gardening business) but today I can't find a single one! I'm assuming they're visiting their cousins Chez Bess.

Spiders in our house are called Bruce. Don't ask me why.

Fat Albert still hasn't reappeared.

spiderlight what type of spider are you? A Charlotte or a gallopy fucker?

We have a whopper living under our microwave. I'm wondering if we end up irradiating it and I get bitten, will I be able to climb the stairwell to paint right up to the ceiling line?

I am most definitely not a gallopy fucker. (I only gallop when I've been watching too much Miranda). I am a Charlotte, but a nice little tiny teeny sparkly glowing one, honestly I am.

I am also most definitely NOT the type of spider my friend found in her kitchen the other morning eating a snail

Shall we all move into one of these?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34247009

'Advice offered includes placing conkers in the house, the theory being that spiders and other creepy-crawlies are scared of them. But research by Nottingham University's school of life sciences found the opposite was the case - that spiders actually quite liked them, favouring them as something to hide behind.'

I tried conkers, the beasts just climb over them.

I didn't know that spiders could poo

I'm now looking over my shoulder etc everywhere I go

Gallopy fucker in the kitchen tonight! Shit it was fast. Huddled in where the units meet the floor so I couldn't get a good thwack at it with my trainer. Was hammering away at it yelling "die, you fucker!'.
God knows what the downstairs neighbour thought....

I'm afraid I'm also extremely late to the spider fest, but have to say I'm loving and hating this thread in equal measure

I also hate spiders with a vengeance and have had some pretty horrific encounters (IMHO) personally......

During my time as a student in Southampton I rented what I thought at the time was a perfectly delightful basement flat not realising as an innocent, newly-left-home teenager that damp, dingy basements are basically spider magnets where I confronted large fuck-off arachnids on what seemed like a daily basis.....the fact that I rarely bothered with the vacuum cleaner or any other cleaning never entered my head as a reason why my infestation was so bad!

One night I returned home (most likely slightly inebriated, 'twas a long time ago so recollection not great!) and crawled into bed only to realise I needed a pee. On venturing into the deeper, darker recesses of my flat (a Georgian building that comprised mainly offices, mine was the only inhabited flat so I was totally alone at night ), I discovered a bloody ginormous beast on the tiles of the shower enclosure. Forgetting how desperately I need the loo I fled (screaming at the top of my voice - not that a single soul could hear me) back to my bed......where I stayed - with legs no doubt firmly crossed - till morning, by which time said eight-legged bastard had disappeared. It being the weekend I sloped off home on the train to my parents' house, fervently hoping the sod would die a grisly death in my absence.

Fast forward a few years and I was married with one DS. Returning home with him in his buggy - DH was at work - I entered our kitchen where I found a huge fucker of a black, large-bodied, thick-legged spider on the wall just inside the door. As this was the 90s and I had no mobile, plus typically the damned landline phone was in the kitchen, I grabbed 18mth old DS, bolted from the house and made for the closest phone box where I called my dad who thankfully (living only ten minutes drive away) came to my rescue with a rolled-up newspaper

More recently we moved to rural Essex, a place neither DH nor I had any knowledge of (other than the obvious TOWIE ) and where we basically knew not a single soul. We've always owned period houses, with their associated nooks and crannies, but nothing prepared me for the apocalyptic invasion of spiders we saw during the three years I could bare it before selling up we stayed. On a nightly basis, whatever the season I can guarantee a whole phalanx (now, there's a good word) of eight-legged bastards would march across the floor whenever we sat down to relax with a glass of wine. They were literally everywhere in that bloody house - even though we renovated it from top to bottom, sealing every crevice as we went, they were there......as soon as that bloody house was finished it was on the market and get the hell out. Amusingly, the husband of the couple that bought the place confessed to a mortal fear of spiders and we didn't dare divulge what he was letting himself in for

Curiously, our last house - in rural Wiltshire - was not too bad on the spider front - although when doing some major building work we did find some huge fuckers and I did have one particularly nasty experience the night before my dad's funeral last year when one dropped on my face whilst I was asleep in bed! Think it might have been a message from beyond the grave or something - my dad was a bit of an odd sort!

Current house - semi-rural - is not too bad.....plenty of Charlottes and a few bad boy Isembard types, but considering the 60' spider-encrusted wisteria growing across the front and the fact we have doors open constantly for the dogs, I can say (whilst keeping everything firmly crossed) we haven't had too many indoor encounters of the eight-legged kind so far (first Autumn/Winter here though and we do have semi-basement rooms & cellar which is a worry). Doesn't help that the PO left umpteen picture hooks/nails in every wall which we're too last to remove as well as two rows of weird round discs in our bedroom ceiling (reinforcement from where some idiot put their foot through the joists in the attic above ) and in the semi-darkness I keep mistaking these for Aragogs marching to get me .......

I think me and the eight legged beasts need to come up with a mutual agreement. If they don't want to get hoovered or squashed then they don't come in the house. It's quite easy really I think but they just don't understand.

too lazy, not last

Well. I have just caught up on the last two days worth of discussion and I have the following comments...

1: sadness for the demise of Mr. Bess who so nobly and bravely spread his body on the bird table for the birds (yes, I read it like that too!)

2: CURSES to Mr. Bess who is now responsible for the ear worm that is O what a night that is now doing the rounds of MY cranium. Huh.

3: I don't like spider death throes. There was a large dead (as in legs in the air dead) spider that I prodded...it wiggled most unnervingly and then went back to pretending to be a dead thingy. You know, one of those. Was not nice.

4: Daddy-long-legs spiders I can cope with. Daddy-long-legs crane flies however are insects of Satan and must be treated as such. .

Lurking....and laughing...often to the point of tears...
Spiders in our house are all Pete or derivatives of - Peter, Peterina, Petette, Petetta, Petey etc etc. A system invented by my middle son when he brought the original Pete back home with him after finding him on a visit to a local National Trust property

ANOTHER huge gallopy fucker in the kitchen tonight. That makes two tonight. Think this one might have been the bigger brother of the one I squished earlier. Hope to fuck there isnt an even bigger one to come! This is what I get for congratulating myself on having got off lightly this year so far.....

demented there's definitely another, even bigger brother. It's the three gallopy fuckers gruff. Trip trapping all over your house...

Be warned. It's there somewhere, just waiting for its opportunity to attack

I discovered dh hoovered up all my charlottes today. I had one in each room of the house, he didn't believe me when I said they ate other spiders.

I bet we have a spider visitor tonight now for the 1st time in ages. I shall blame dh. Poor charlottes.

I just killed a spider before I posted this message lol
I can't stand them.. I hear spiders and flies easily get swallowed while you sleep! I clean my house every Sunday, top to bottom but they find a way to come back! I wonder... if there was afterlife... who would ever want to be a spider? Count me in to be a Dolphin :D

Have had 12, yes 12, of the ones that landed on Steve's face in the last 3/4 weeks. I do not live in the country and am on the first floor. One very kindly ran up DS and I had to do inner screaming whilst flicking it off of him, he then had a chat with it, after which I may have dropped a pot of paint on it. Thankfully he isn't scared of spiders and put the flattened beast down the toilet for me.

IMO if it's not paying rent or contributing to cleaning it's not staying here, although I don't mine the Charlottes or tiny ones, but the big ones can do one.

P.s have hugely lurked on this thread and has had me genuinely had me laughing out loud, thank you all

There is an alternative to my spider disco it seems, though from the amount of press they're getting, perhaps they're just waiting for an interviewer.

Just need to raise £2k

Felt something tiny drop from a door frame the other day. Until this thread, it would never have occurred to me that it might be spider poo!

No newbies indoors since the duelling Charlottes departed but I'm planning to pull out the fridge tomorrow to start decorating the dining room so I doubt it will be a clear run. I'll report back if I can

Have I mentioned the Boris I used to have when I lived in the UK? he was a Large House Spider, and he used to appear in the evenings from one side of the fireplace, crossing the floor diagonally heading for the door - but every time, he would stop in the middle, turn and face the tv to see what was on, before continuing. Some nights he would stay for a while; others, he'd go straight on. I'm sure it was the same spider every time, used to amuse the hell out of me!