Had to evict a big ass spider from my room today and was reminded of this meme template. At least it’s easier to evict spiders than cats, the latter don’t fit in measuring cups.
Someone here mentioned a while ago that some house spiders learn your active hours and typically come out to hunt when you’re either not around or asleep.
I usually ignore them because I’d much rather deal with occasional corner cobwebs than literally any other pest hanging around.
Spiders are the only thing not interested in my food.
Spiders being present also ward off pests that you won’t have as many while you have their active predators there. Spiders are bros, just let them do their thing.
It’s also common knowledge that when you’re inactive (sometimes referred to as asleep) spiders descend into your mouth about 8 times per year. 🫥
See the average is stated as 8/year, but the problem is Spiders George, who lives in a cave and swallows 37 000. Spiders George is a statistical outlier that should have been pulled from the data set!
For anyone that may actually’ve believed that:
So how did this claim arise? In a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of “facts” that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous “facts,” among which was the statistic cited above about the average person’s swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst’s propagation of this false “fact” has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet.
What are they doing, just fucking teabagging me in my sleep tri-fortnightly?!
I draw the line at black widows, like the ones outside my sibling’s house.
They are not friend shaped.
For real.
Black Widows and Brown Recluses, no thank you.
Cellar spiders and jumping spiders - you’re good.Not saying you should befriend black widows or anything but they are actually pretty docile and will only bite in extreme situations when they are trapped and it’s the only option. Typically they will just pretend to be dead.
Problem is that’s a very common situation, like when they’re wedged in a plant pot, in drainage holes along the house, in the A/C unit, in the hose reel, or places in the yard the dog will sniff. Especially when they nest there and get defensive over their silk ball.
I’d want to leave them alone. But its simply not practical.
We tend to leave spiders alone in the house, they don’t really bother anything and keep other bugs at bay. The exception is when I need to work somewhere they built webs, then the webs gotta go and for that I use the shop vac.
For the centipedes though we have an agreement, they can stay as long as we don’t see them. You start scurrying across the kitchen floor and I will step on you (though to be fair I think that’s true for anything that “scurries” in the same way a centipede does).
Well, they are not really the same, are they? One is cute, small, furry and graceful. And the other one’s a cat.
Also, both will absolutely bite you, randomly. And climb on random things.
At least spiders won’t drop things off ledges
Except for themselves. Usually aiming land on your head for some inexplicable reason.
spiders are fine as long as they arent venomous, and Estonia doesn’t have venomous spiders in the wild
Perhaps dont eat the spiders?
shit right i meant venomous
If a spider was you sized it wouldn’t hesitate
“A tiger enters the room”
It’s probably find it’s legs don’t really work at that size though.
ok but also valid me and the spiders have a rule. they stay outside and keep the perimeter clear and i dont freak out T_T
though as much as i’m terrified of spiders they’ll always end up with me getting the biggest cup you can find, sliding a paper under it, and screaming all the way to the window.
To be honest, putting them in a glass really helps me. Not too much of an arachnophobe but once they’re contained I have absolutely no issues.
I recommend cardboard instead of paper btw, it’s so much more sturdy and there’s zero risk of the spider noticing a gap and escaping when tilting to lift it up. I’m using the same strategy for wasps that somehow found their way inside and refuse to fucking leave through the open window and there the lack of gap is SO much more important because I don’t want a pissed off wasp escaping.
cardboard is a little harder to slide under the glass but i do recommend like thicker letters (like bulk mail etc)
The best thing I’ve found is packaging paperboard (the thick non-corrugated paper material cereal boxes and similarly packaged products are made from) - stiff enough to not flop even on big openings, but thin enough to slip under without risking a containment breach or trapping one of the spider’s legs (make sure it doesn’t have a crease though, as those can both lead to floppage and binding when slipping under the cup). We’ve got a chunk of it that lives with the dedicated SpiderScooper™ jar and I haven’t had a mishap yet! As a bonus it’s dense enough material that wasps can’t sting you through it like they can with cheaper paper (bulk mailers or clay-heavy papers like you get in junk mail seem to block that too though!) and it’s strong enough that it will support the weight of mice and similar small critters without much effort.
I always feel bad when I have to remove spiders from the house. I try to be gentle, and I do hope that they stick around outside. There’s more for them out there anyway.
Spider are cool outside but not inside.
i mean, they’re pretty much entirely room temperature, unlike cats, which are warm blooded
Thanks to the heatwaves, cats are also room temperature
Soon, they’ll be colder than room temperature
Or is it the room that is cat temperature? 🤔
I’m not referring to their body temperature… I am saying I prefer spiders outside my house not inside and cats inside not outside…
ITT: Orb Weavers seemingly help to reduce arachnophobia? Chill little dudes, just trying to get by like the rest of us
Nobody cares, but the four fingers angers me.
I have black widows all over my house, they are welcome here. You are not.
There’s one right by the front door, waiting for you. They are very patient and well-behaved companions.
I’m usually arachnophobic, but once I had an orb weaver decide to live on the back of my work truck. Freaked me out at first, but I let it be. It would come out of it’s hiding spot at night to make its web across the truck, and I would watch it clean up in the morning before I left. Almost got it on my face a few times while doing overnight work. It stayed with me all summer, I could always find it hidden under a door seal or up on the ladder rack, tucked away.
It was nice almost having a pet. Then, one morning, I get ready to leave for work. The web was still up, tattered, and spider bro was nowhere to be seen…
That ending was surprisingly sad.
One of my coworkers said she was trying to catch some ants to try to nurse a spider in her house back to good health. Absolutely insane behavior.
golly, what a woman 💘
tell her that she’s my friend and I love her for that
I taught my kids early and often that spiders are friends, aside from a few dangerous ones we don’t really encounter here. Mosquitos are scarier than spiders. One of my kids is still terrified of spiders though 😭
I don’t think arachnophobia is learned or a result of upbringing!
Look at any 2 year old digging around in the dirt and notice how they will happily pick up and examine spiders and other “creepy crawlies” with their bare hands. They haven’t learned from society as a whole that they’re supposed to be weirded out or afraid of these things.
We tried so hard to raise our kids to not be afraid of spiders, and to decide for themselves whether they had a preference for blue or pink, dolls or cars etc. But none of that effort survived contact with their extended family or starting school.
At least for the spider thing we’re having some success with unlearning that fear. When it’s a choice between spiders in their room or mosquitoes, they’re choosing the spiders.
I haven’t been able to observe all two year olds. It’s only a few percent of the population that has arachnophobia, and the fact that it doesn’t always present in infancy doesn’t mean it’s learned.
Though it’s quite possible there’s a combination of predisposition and learning.
Definitely some evolutionary coding at play.
