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Spider Season

Rudolph Quin

Rudolph Quin

Mistaken for some sort of scoundrel
Withdrawn
Joined
Aug 2, 2009
Location
here
Do you find that there's a "season" for when you notice/see a lot of spiders? I have a basement apartment and live in a rural area, so, spiders frequently come into my space(mostly wolf and grass spiders even though both are huge motherfuckers). But I notice a bit of a pattern with their appearances. This past winter there was a lot of them, seemingly getting bigger each time they'd appear but suddenly around February and March, not even related to warm weather since we still had snow on the ground until April...they stopped coming around. At all.

Not that I'm like, "hey, eight legged creepy dudes, come crawling in here because I totes miss the moments of panic once you're spotted and the calculation of whether or not I can one hit kill you with a book because you're positioned weird on a shelf." Not saying that at all. But it's been months now and I still haven't seen any and I'm just wondering if they're all out getting tans or what.

What about you? What spiders do you have around you? Do you see them often? Are you a kill or be killed reactionary type or a soft soul who transports them to the outdoors? ...people from Australia do not really need to comment in this thread; our prayers and blow torches are with you guys.
 
Not with spiders, but I live in Florida so the climate is pretty much the same 9 months out of the year. Termite season is scary in some areas though. My old job used to be covered with these flying ant things(everyone was calling them termites). Seriously, whenever a customer would open the door like ten of them would get in, and they would fly all over the lobby, on my keyboard. I quit that job shortly after. It was really gross.
 
Princess Pittooey said:
Not with spiders, but I live in Florida so the climate is pretty much the same 9 months out of the year. Termite season is scary in some areas though. My old job used to be covered with these flying ant things(everyone was calling them termites). Seriously, whenever a customer would open the door like ten of them would get in, and they would fly all over the lobby, on my keyboard. I quit that job shortly after. It was really gross.
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*shivers* Seriously, I don't blame you. I'm not that freaked out by bugs on a whole but nobody likes bugs crawling on them.
 
Spider season here in southern Cali is November-March because of the "rainy" season. For some fucking reason they choose to nest exclusively in my shower during that time, though. Little bastards.
 
I live in the UK, around this time of year theres alot of flies and wasps about...then they slowly start going as more and more spiders start coming in by August/September. Im really not good with spiders, especially when they go all stealth mode around the house and hide in kitchen drawers and such. Oddly I dont mind Tarantulas though since they're fluffy :3
 
Ghost_kitty said:
I live in the UK, around this time of year theres alot of flies and wasps about...then they slowly start going as more and more spiders start coming in by August/September. Im really not good with spiders, especially when they go all stealth mode around the house and hide in kitchen drawers and such. Oddly I dont mind Tarantulas though since they're fluffy :3
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I'm also kind of alright with tarantulas, though less because they're fluffy and more because they're utterly harmless to humans but tend to keep other more pesky critters under control.
 
I didn't know that they weren't harmful to humans. Then in that case, I might be a bit more willing to stay in a room with one...let it wander around the floor and climb the wall like a cat. I remember seeing one of those nature shows a long time ago do a segment on the blue furred tarantula and it showed like a really slowed down video of the thing scrapping its legs together and throwing up a bunch of its hair. These were super fine but covered in bacteria or something, so, they'd get embedded in the skin and eyes of prey and incapacitate them. I don't know much about other tarantulas but I assume they don't also have this defense mechanism and it's probably just the blue ones that do it.

Still no sign of any spiders down here.
 
As far as I know any breed of tarantula can fling urticating hairs to dissuade pursuit from predators, though some using it to incapacitate prey was not something I knew.

But yeah, they're completely harmless to people, it's why they're the most common kind of pet arachnid.
 
Actually, urticating hairs is mainly a defense mechanism used to ward of predators than to catch pray. I've never heard of the hairs being embedded in the skin, but if they get in your eyes or the back of your throat, it is incredibly irritating. You'd probably actually rather be bitten than get a face full of tarantula hairs.

Anyways, I'm always glad to see people recognize that spiders are good to have in the home. Most any kind of spider helps keep pests in check, not just Tarantulas. It should also be noted that almost all spiders are incapable of causing any kind of serious harm to a human being, and would much much rather try to run away when confronted than try and fight back. It is true that tarantulas in particular are even less harmful. There are a ton of reasons why bitting a person would be the absolute last thing any spider would want.

I'll stop now before I get carried away, but carry on folks! :D
 
Ah, yes, I must have misremembered what the hairs were for. To be fair, I saw the show a long time ago. All I really remember about it was the demonstration with the slowed down video showing the spider rubbing its bottom and then the hairs flying up, the lighting just so to show them floating in the air above it.
 
Spiders are back. Tiny little dude the other day and now tonight, this huge ass motherfucker, speeding across the carpet right for me. Like bigger than a half dollar, I kid you not! I shoulda gotten a picture before I smashed his face to death but I swear, he had a knife. It was a situation.

Wherever they were before when they were "missing"? ...yeah, I'm ready for them to go back there now.
 
It's just a large 'house' spider you usually don't see because they stay out of our way most of the year. Autumn's early this year in the northern hemisphere so the spider breeding season is early too. The bigger ones are the females and you may want to reconsider killing them as, once they've mated with their smaller counterparts, they'll eat them for you!

I totally get your fear of them. Their speed and agility is disconcerting and they can truly seem like they're aiming right at you! Where I live, you either accept them and let them do their thing, or spend a month and a half hyper-ventilating lol. Hope they breed in your hallway or anywhere less obvious! Better still, hope they suss they're not appreciated and wait till lights out!!! ;)
 
Actually, the whole female spiders eating the males after mating happens a lot less frequently than it's made out to be. Even in the case of the notorious black widow spider, the males will very likely be able walk away after copulating just fine. In fact, it's not uncommon for male black widows to move into the web of the female after mating and stay with her, living together peacefully and even sharing food with each other. Isn't that adorable?
 
Nature Girl said:
It's just a large 'house' spider you usually don't see because they stay out of our way most of the year. Autumn's early this year in the northern hemisphere so the spider breeding season is early too. The bigger ones are the females and you may want to reconsider killing them as, once they've mated with their smaller counterparts, they'll eat them for you!

I totally get your fear of them. Their speed and agility is disconcerting and they can truly seem like they're aiming right at you! Where I live, you either accept them and let them do their thing, or spend a month and a half hyper-ventilating lol. Hope they breed in your hallway or anywhere less obvious! Better still, hope they suss they're not appreciated and wait till lights out!!! ;)
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I've gotten fairly comfortable with them, even the grass spiders that end up about as big as a quarter with their legs. But this fucking guy just scared the shit out of me, lol. Definitely not a grass spider but I don't think he was bulky enough to be a wolf spider. The legs fanned out and tapered to points, almost reddish brown in color. He was pretty awesome but I can only find appreciation after the fact. Usually I'm alright with rationalizing them away, like how they don't actually want to bite me or anything, but with this one so big, it would have ruined my whole evening to let him live and crawl away. It was that type of situation. :blush:

Usually, if they're not terribly huge, I stomp and smack my hand near them a lot or blow air at them to get them to scurry away. And truthfully, I am glad that they're back around but this fucker bursting onto the scene was like, "Weeeee're baaaaack! Haha! Heard you missed us!" XD
 
Must be the different breeds, Stonetribe. Every year I watch the 'local' females mate and devour their mates....just the cycle of Nature. I've never had the privilege of black widows here. Sounds cosy! :)

Rudolph, I never really get used to the sudden shock of the real biggies. We're hard-wired to recognize possible threat and some spiders can be just that. Hope you don't have any more 'monsters'. ;)
 
I'm sure it happens more frequently with some species than others, I just wanted to note that in general it's over exaggerated. ^^ The same thing applies to praying mantis's and their myths about mate eating.
 
I know you told us Aussies not to, Rudolph, but I have to :)

With the weather warming up over here, and Thunderstorm season about to start, it's the time of year when the spiders who've been hiding for a few months decide they'd be more comfortable inside!

We have a few where I am, the most dangerous, The White-Tail, but that isn't the scariest. That honour goes to the Huntsman, and it isn't even venomous, and can't hurt you, just damn big!

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They like to hide in your car, and unexpectedly drop into your lap when you lower the sun-visor. I know, I'm talking from experience, xD

I've been told that if you allow the Daddy Long Legs webs to remain intact, it keeps away other spiders, and it actually seems to work. However, that could just be by pure coincidence, or some sort of placebo effect in my mind!
 
That spider refuses to conform to social norms and live in a web. "It's my life I want to live inside a fruit!" :p

Yeah I've hear about that, spiders that have a habit of droping from the ceiling of your car while driving. That must be pretty freaky, and not just to people afraid of spiders. Most anyone would probably jump a little if they had a living creature fall onto your lap and try to scurry off. Remember folks, spiders do not want to bite you and even if they do (assuming they actually use venom and not just a dry bite, which is also very likely) they will almost never cause any serious kind of harm. Even in places lie Australia where spiders tend to be most dangerous (remember that's not a super high bar to begin with) healthy folks will almost certainly end up just fine, especially with effective antivenom's available and fantastic health care.

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I'm not watching that, Nature Girl! :mad: X3

Now you've got me looking upwards, Quix! I don't think I've ever had one fall on me but back in my teen years, when I was so terrified of them that I couldn't even squash them, I had a car experience with one. I was riding in the passenger seat with my mom going somewhere and all of a sudden I see right in front of my face, dangling on a line of web, a tiny white spider, slowly climbing down to my eye level. I freaked, frozen and shrieking my head off, unable to do anything about it, until she stopped and swiped it out the car window with a piece of mail. She was very annoyed with me, lol.

Seeing them so frequently in the basement apartment has certainly helped desensitize me to them. I used to squash every single one I saw, even teeny tiny ones, when I first moved here, about 3 years ago. Now, since I know they'll likely kill and eat other things, and the most I see are the wolfies and grass spiders, and since I usually see so many of them, it's just not feasible to kill them all. Sometimes during the spider season, I'll see 2 or 3 a day. Now it's gotten to the point where I dunno if it's the same guy I saw before or a new one but anyway.

And I'm a lot less fearful of them biting me. It's the fear of them on me for some reason, crawling all over me, I have a very visceral response. But they usually startle easy and can be shooed to move out of my space, especially little ones. The only really poisonous ones we have around are the fiddlers or what do you call them, brown recluses, but I was so paranoid about it one time, I actually forced myself to look them up and learn about them. Turns out, according to some sites, they don't even go up in the northeast, certainly not PA, even though people around here complain about them and have stories of them. Apparently, bites constantly get misdiagnosed as recluse bites, despite the small and very southern area in which they live.

And another thing that is strange, is tarantulas and close up pictures of spiders don't bother me. Like that one you shared stonetribe, is actually not terrifying at all. But I just googled the fiddler to try to find the actual name of them and saw an image of one next to a penny for comparison and had to get up and walk away from my computer for a minute. Like the faraway look at it, when you see all the tiny, slender legs and body causes that visceral reaction in me. Very weird.
 
Sorry, Rudolph. Just thought it would underscore the surprise element of typical arachnophobia. I'll always have it, simply because they tend to startle. :s

Mr Quixotic's creature totally did my head in at first due to the size and the thought of my being stuck in a car with it in my lap! But I've clicked again and it does have a strange beauty, though would likely startle me into a cardiac arrest! :(

Then again, I could gaze at Stonetribe's beauty for hours..... ;)
 
Good on you for taking the effort to learn about your fear of spiders! I know that might seem like a silly thing to praise but I feel that the vast majority of arachnophobia stems not actually knowing about much about them and only going of whatever attention garnering story you happen to hear. Just taking a bit of time to educate yourself on spiders does wonders to help one understand that they're not the bloodthirsty malicious demons you might have thought they were. You even knew about how most "spider bites" are misdiagnosed and aren't even actually spider bites. I'm such a dork but seeing this kind of thing makes me so happy. :D

I don't think there's anything wrong with being weary of having spiders or insects crawling on your skin, it's a very strong distinct sensation. And I think I can see how close up images don't bother you as much as a more scale revealing picture. Like the close up images are so big that you know there's nothing there but the smaller farther away ones look a lot more similar to what it'd be like to actually be like to look at them. Or something like that..
 
Nature Girl said:
Sorry, Rudolph. Just thought it would underscore the surprise element of typical arachnophobia. I'll always have it, simply because they tend to startle. :s

Mr Quixotic's creature totally did my head in at first due to the size and the thought of my being stuck in a car with it in my lap! But I've clicked again and it does have a strange beauty, though would likely startle me into a cardiac arrest! :(

Then again, I could gaze at Stonetribe's beauty for hours..... ;)
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lol, I just know I cannot bring myself to watch it. XD You know that gif that was making the rounds a few years ago, of that fluffy pile and a hand or stick comes from the side of the screen and pokes it, and it's a bunch of spiders rushing away from a corner? Yeah, I'm still haunted, lol.

Seriously, even knowing it is just a harmless creature, anything small and crawly like that dropping suddenly on you while driving, cramped space, behind the wheel, and no escape, all of that, would be horrific to go through.

Stonetribe said:
Good on you for taking the effort to learn about your fear of spiders! I know that might seem like a silly thing to praise but I feel that the vast majority of arachnophobia stems not actually knowing about much about them and only going of whatever attention garnering story you happen to hear. Just taking a bit of time to educate yourself on spiders does wonders to help one understand that they're not the bloodthirsty malicious demons you might have thought they were. You even knew about how most "spider bites" are misdiagnosed and aren't even actually spider bites. I'm such a dork but seeing this kind of thing makes me so happy. :D

I don't think there's anything wrong with being weary of having spiders or insects crawling on your skin, it's a very strong distinct sensation. And I think I can see how close up images don't bother you as much as a more scale revealing picture. Like the close up images are so big that you know there's nothing there but the smaller farther away ones look a lot more similar to what it'd be like to actually be like to look at them. Or something like that..
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Well, after a few years, it's about time, especially when I started seeing them so frequently. I took pictures and posted them to facebook and got conflicting assertions on what the spiders were. I do not want brown recluses in my room, since the bite is really bad and I live in the country without a whole lot of nearby medical help. I didn't want to take the chance of playing that roulette game. So, I looked it up and set my heart and mind at ease that the buff spiders I'd been seeing were actually wandering hunters who were keeping other creepy crawlies out of my space most likely.

That's most likely it, that seeing smaller pics is more how you see them when they're around.
 
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