Unwanted Roommates
Irradiated by LabRat
Lissa writes of her and her husband’s encounter, and subsequent defeat of, a wolf spider.
As long-time readers know, I am a somewhat recovered arachnophobe. I have an atavistic fear of spiders that used to be quite severe when I was a child, and at this point can best be described as controlled loathing tempered by education and exposure. I no longer am sent into a berserker killing spree at the sight of the eight-legged and can even tolerate them being in the room with me, although crawling on me is still grounds for an immediate death sentence.
My problem is that my life mate and best beloved actually likes the little bastards. I can broadly accept that having benign arachnid top predators in the house is better than having venomous ones, so except in the case of black widows (which he seems to slightly regret killing), this house is free-range for all types of spiders save those. Including wolf spiders. I’m well used to wolf spiders, as they’re quite common here, but as Lissa observed, the females in particular grow to… stunning dimensions. The one she has in her photographs is somewhat middle-sized for a female.
Currently, we have a quite large female in residence. While under normal circumstances Stingray is willing to shoo the ones big enough to still make me scream in shock outside- this is solely because during those normal circumstances he believes the spider in question to have better hunting opportunities outside. With the temperature outside dropping and insect populations going dormant, he now believes that this spider will be better off indoors, despite potential danger from the cat and Kang. (And me, should she get too near me.) Presumably she will be steadily knocking down the other spiders in the house until she’s large enough and feeling game enough to try for mammalian prey, which she already looks nearly ready for. I wouldn’t give a baby mouse long odds on surviving her, at any rate.
The end result of this uncomfortable arrangement is semi-daily events like this:
Me, somewhere random in the house: “AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGH!”
Stingray, *excited*: “Oh, she’s still here? Shoo her under something, would you? Don’t catch the dog’s attention.”
Me: “YOU.”
Stingray: “Fine. C’mere sweetie…”
And no, I am not “sweetie”.
Kang is very confused. Her normal response to small skittering animals is to eat them or squash them, but Stingray has informed her in blunt terms she is not allowed to do this with this spider. Her look of mingled heartbreak and disbelief as she slouched back to the corner to go back to sleep was certainly expressive, at any rate.
The other woman. Not our individual, but the same species. And yes, as one commenter at Lissa’s noted, her eyes DO glow in the dark.
October 22nd, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I think Danielle would leave me if I suggested she share a house with that thing.
October 22nd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
D’aww!
Every few weeks or so in the summer and early fall I get good-sized orb weavers building webs on my balcony rails and window frames. Mostly they eat moths, which is enough to keep them in my good books, but every once in a while I’ve seen one catch a wasp; this latter makes me want to start breeding Araneidae.
I wouldn’t mind having some good-sized wolf spiders around to knock down the feral mouse population and lob at the stoners on balconies below mine.
October 22nd, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Meh- that’s a little one
We used to have one of these living in our house in Hawaii… They are called cane spiders, and that sucker was about 5 inches across! We used to feed it hamburger meat!
http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Animals.cane
October 22nd, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Wolf spiders are okay with me, but I actively enjoy watching the black-and-yellow garden spiders at work when a grasshopper or cricket finds its way into their webs. Heh.
October 22nd, 2010 at 11:09 pm
I’m with Stingray, here. I mind the time the ex-sweetie’s pet tarantula got loose and I could coax it back into the terrarium when she couldn’t.
October 23rd, 2010 at 3:38 am
Nope, I’m sorry, but I’m firmly in the LabRat/Lissa camp here. It’s crush-spray-stomp ‘em to death for anything crawly that I spot in my house. Wolf spiders in particular give me the willies, although it’s the redbacks here that’ll really get you.
October 23rd, 2010 at 5:53 am
“tempered by education and exposure”
Phobias. Only so much you can do.
I’m pretty cool with anything that doesn’t bite or sting me; and I better be living in a house that was built in 1850 and is a long way from well-sealed. I will dump uninvited critters outside even in the snow, however.
October 23rd, 2010 at 9:27 am
Yeah, I’m in the recovering phobic camp. I’m fairly tolerant of them and actually appreciate the ones that live outdoors. I’ve been known to toss moths into their webs even. Wolfie there would have to move. We had quite a lovely outdoor dwelling one a couple of years ago that decided the indoors looked quite attractive to her. The cats nearly tore down the curtains when they saw her. She had to go.
October 23rd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I usually usher them into a cup and then deposit it outside, although my wife tries to deafen them and The Fur regards anything not bipedal as a menu item.
October 23rd, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I’m usually* a live and let live (though preferably outdoors), and we frequently have spiders inside that I shoo out under the careful eyes of my maine coon. But now that I have my very own SEM to play with at work, do you think I can find one to catch and sputter coat? It’s like they know. That’s all we need. Sentient spiders!
*Except when they land on my face when I’m in bed. Then it’s squash city!
October 23rd, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Heather, I fell in love with you when I read that. ‘Cause you BOTH shoo them out in general but would also sputter-coat one for examination given the chance.
October 24th, 2010 at 11:43 am
It usually only takes one abcessed spider bite to find an acceptable pesticide for around the house. The huge pus-draining bulge either takes a visit to the doctor, or a week of extra large bandages to contain the blood laden goop that seeps from the sore.
Spiders have a purpose, but I haven’t yet found any useful social interaction that requires me to live with them.
October 24th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Last winter I found a spider THE SIZE OF MY FREAKING HAND in the kitchen. If husband had not rallied to my rescue I would have brought the damn chickens in to kill it for me. I’d rather have a kitchen full of chicken crap than live with a mouse-eating eight-legged monster.
October 25th, 2010 at 7:35 am
Yikes!! I think Mike might hate spiders MORE than I do. And I know for sure that snakes give him the heebie-jeebies. You are a brave woman to live with that interloper . . . and poor Kang (snicker)
October 25th, 2010 at 10:45 am
So then … all of the hunters in Reprisal will be bringing giant ( bear-sized ) pet black widows to the Halloween shindig?
October 25th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Fortunately Blizzard has never come up with anything half as frightening in the giant spider department as Drakan: The Ancients’ Gates did. They had a long section conducted mostly in the dark with gigantic spiders clearly inspired by wolf spiders that take a good many hits to die and tend to drop off the ceiling…
October 25th, 2010 at 11:43 am
I’m not particularly fond of spiders myself, but I recognize they can be useful in the right context. Consequently, if they’re outside, I generally leave them alone, but if they come inside, I’ll either capture-and-release when practical or terminate with extreme prejudice when practicality is lying on the floor with my clothes and I’m getting ready to take a shower.
October 25th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
I can exist in the same room as a spider without embarrassing myself, but roaches freak me the fuck out.
October 25th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
I am in the “like- orb- weavers” group. Hounds kill a lot of ground- level invaders- we get a lot in a 100 year- old plus NM house.
I kill widows but am so un- phobic I have to be reminded. One fell on my head at 3 AM some time back. I jumped, turned on the light, recoiled, an asked Libby for a jar. She gave me THE LOOK, and squashed it without further ceremony.
October 25th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Sent y’all a picture for All Hallows Eve and arachnids. Check your e-mail. Yep, they get big here in Reno.
October 27th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
It’s the lack of fangs. Spiders in WoW would be a hell of a lot creepier if they had a proper set.
October 28th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Spiders allowed to live in my house? Oh. Hell. No. Except for the fuzzy jumpy spiders. Those don’t bother me for some reason, as long as they don’t surprise me. A wolf spider of the size you’re describing would probably lead me to deploy the 12-gauge.