Is there any way to get rid of Brown Recluse spiders?

Factual Questions
1

“You may be overrun by horrendous, poisonous spiders” is apparently something they tend to leave out of information about moving to a new state or city. It would seem it’s not considered relevant to the “full disclosure” stuff when you’re buying a house, either.

We moved from Connecticut to Memphis, TN. The worst we had in CT were these creepy, long-legged house centipedes, which I only ever saw three of in five years, but our new house in TN is infested with Brown Recluse spiders.

These charming little fuckers are the only spiders that live in colonies, so if you’ve seen one, you’ve got a lot more. I don’t know where the “recluse” part of their name comes from, since I’ve seen five of them in the past two weeks, and every time you open a closet door, one of them jumps out and practically yells “Tah-daa!”. They can live for two to four years, go six months without food or water and don’t seem to be susceptible to the usual sprays and poisons.

We’ve had an Orkin contract since October, and they seemed to have mostly gone away over the winter, but now they’re back. I’ve just read that having your house treated can actually make the infestation worse, since Brown Recluses are happy to scavenge, and it just provides that many more dead bugs for them to eat.

So has anyone else had any luck dealing with these things? Would tenting the house kill them? Fire? Massive doses of radiation? I’m willing to try anything.

2

It’s too late for me to think up a witty reply. Honestly — these babies are what you should look at. Cheap and effective.

In 2-3 months when you see your next live spider, just repeat the whole fumigating process.

The Doctor

3

1st brown recluse site This is a commercial site but it has a lot of good info. IIRC, brown recluse don’t like being disturbed so keeping stuff moved around is good. Glue traps are good. too. I’ll bet you can use the ones sold for mice just as well. Good luck!

4

Dear God. The bite photos on that site :eek:

5

Blast off and nuke 'em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

6

You capture your brown recluses, and I’ll capture some scorpions and we can set up a battle arena for them. Think of the money that can be made on arachnid death fights.

7

I just saw the bite photos. :eek:

May a diseased yak soil your virgin daughter’s prized fez.

8

I doubt if you have “colonies” of brown recluse, but here are some good threads on spiders:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspiderbite.html

Note that the common house spider looks a bit like the brown recluse, but actually eats the brown recluse. So, random spraying is not a good idea until you are sure what you have.

9

For the price of a decent spraying you might consider a slightly different approach. House Geckos. You might see one occasionally flitting around but they will hunt down and eat tons of bugs.

here is a link on a study testing their ability to kill and eat them, apparently they are pretty darn good at it.

10

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. We did use traps at the beginning, and that caught a lot of them, but we hadn’t put any more down since they weren’t catching any more. The problem now is that we have several cats that I’m sure are going to end up with glue boards stuck to them.

Thankfully, no one has been bitten so far, but I have found them in our clothes on two occassions, and it creeps me the hell out.

Yes, they are definately brown recluse. I’ve examined them both alive and dead, checked for the appropriate markings and compared them to online photographs, and the exterminator confirmed it.

I’ve caulked, glued and stuffed every hole I can find, but our house was built in 1940 and there’s no way I’m ever going to seal them all. I’ll try one of those foggers in the attic (there seem to be a number of them up there, and maybe it will sink into the walls).

Still, nuking them from space does sound tempting.

11

Curiously enough, I’ve seen the house centipedes recommended as a biocontrol for the spiders. My own experience is that the centipedes creep you out in year 1, but by year 10, you basically accept that they’re as much a part of the house as the furniture. And clearly they’re finding something to eat, or they wouldn’t be with us. For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen a brown recluse in my house.

12

You know, I’d actually thought about geckos. I’m afraid our cats would just eat them, though.

13

Well…crocodiles, then.

14

Well, they’ll just eat the cats. And then I’ll have to get elephants to chase out the crocodiles, and we’re not zoned for elephants.

15

Sounds like you would be having a little home grown wild kingdom action :D.

The pet store an ex of mine worked at used to carry them and they were dirt cheap like a dollar each or something like that. Lock up the cats for a day and let the geckos loose. Yeah you will loose some to cats, but cats can’t climb walls. Might be worth a shot even with the occasional gecko added to kittys diet.

I’d rather loose a few geckos to a cat than a cat to a spider…YMMV.

16

Fire, and lots of it!

17

This isn’t a bad idea really. In your warm climate it might work.

18

Oh good. Gecko droppings all over the house. What fun.

And house centipedes do sting, if sufficiently provoked.

Of course, both of these things pale compared to the necrotizing sores caused by brown recluse bites.

In short, have you considered living in a bubble instead?

19

but won’t the poison from the very poisonous spiders kill the geckos? I can’t see em being fast enough to avoid a bite. Maybe I’m wrong

20

Take a look at the link, they cover that. Occasionally a spider would kill a gecko with a bite but the geckos do not seem to have any problem eating them. The article is pretty cool.