When I first moved into my last apartment, we had to deal with a lot of spiders. Actually by we, I mean I, because I was the least arachnophobic (my sister will freak about a little tiny one smaller than a pencil eraser.) I’m of a live and let live philosophy - if it’s far enough way that it’s not bothering me, it may live. If not, I’m finding the vacuum. That distance depends a great deal on it’s size.
I’m sure a large part of why we had so many (and many of them were big) was that when the apartments were between tenants the windows and door were left open. My theory is that when there aren’t human occupants to disturb things the bugs (and by bugs I mean anything smaller than me with too many legs) spread out. Naturally once you move back in they have to disappear or get killed / disturbed / kill it with fire!
I once “escorted” a house spider out to the front porch; the moment it touched the ground, another spider came out from a crevice, pounced on it and carried it away.:eek:
Whether you might actually be seeing hobo spiders depends on where you are (I found no locality info in your profile.) See the distribution map here (click small map to enlarge). Also, as explained on that page, hobo spiders look exactly like maybe 200 harmless relatives to the naked eye. In the city of Seattle, they are almost vanishingly rare compared to their successful competitor the (harmless) giant house spider. As for your wife’s bite – did anyone see that spider? If not, it was probably a misdiagnosis and not a real spider bite.
As already pointed out by Johnny L.A., this one is also debunked on my site, in its original “three feet” form.
Seattle boasts 3 species of Tegenaria (European house spiders) which, like the Three Bears, are small, middle-sized and large. The large one (“giant house spider”) is the most conspicuous because of its size. The ones people actually see are the mature males that wander in search of mates in late summer. They may be totally absent from a few houses but most probably have 25-100 of them in secluded spots. The detailed architecture of the building will determine how many of these end up running across the living room; in some cases the males have little opportunity to reach the human-occupied spaces (probably to the mutual satisfaction of the spiders and humans :)). These spiders don’t know you exist; if you’re scared of them that’s your problem. In reality they are so docile that I use them as hands-on demonstrators for school children.
arachnologus, we have these in the northeast too, right? Because they look like the hoards in the basement. They don’t bite people, do they? Besides the upsetting habit of drowning themselves even after an attempt to redirect them away from the path of the showerhead, I have no problem with them.
Nope, giant house spiders (native to England) have been found in the USA only in the Pacific NW. But there are numerous other species that look similar to the naked eye. Real spider ID requires a microscope. In any case, no spiders (even the small minority of more toxic ones) go out of their way to bite people. For a bite to occur, the spider has to (1) be standing on the person’s skin, and (2) become trapped there. The idea that spiders crawl into people’s beds and bite them is strictly an urban legend.
Could even be higher than 80%. Missouri is the center of that species’ distribution. But (as per another study), even in a house with a brown recluse population of over 2000, actual human bites never happened!
I had a ‘spot’ on both inner calves at about the same position on each one. They were about 10 mm in diameter, and persisted for about a year. You can barely see them now, but they are surrounded by a ring of pale (practically white) skin. I’d assumed that a spider or an insect had become trapped between my calves and bit me. I never had it checked out; and as I said, they’ve pretty much disappeared. So I’m not going to worry about them.
I should have mentioned that I didn’t wonder if it was literally true (24/7 no matter where you are), but in a vague, “generally speaking” sense. But it’s still silly, I now admit.
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Arachnologus, You might enjoy this thread where the “spider question” is being hashed out in the context of evolutionary psychology - particularly, why do many people have spider phobias? (My position is that spiders would never have been a major threat to people and so an evolutionary explaination is unlikely):
I have a significant fear of the little creepers but I’m starting to get more used to them now that I own a house. As long as they don’t make themselves a nuisance, they can hang around; live and let live, you know? Even if they do bug/scare me, I almost never squish one (that’s bad luck). Instead they usually get a free ride outside on the Index Card Express.
