Spider repellant/poison

[Calthrop]

"never mind" as they say -- joke fell flat

 

[ATW Alex 101]

Cup it in your hands and throw it out the window. Job done.

 

[Howardh]

Huge spider in my room = new pet. Did have a problem once with mice in the pantry, I couldn't kill them (way too soft) but did manage to spot one; which saw me and ran away to it's escape route (entrance therefore).

So next evening I created a trap which would catch but not kill it. It worked! Caught mousy, blocked the route in, kept him as a pet!

I'm upset at the moment because my little outdoor pond hasn't got a frog in it. And, no, I wouldn't feed it with the spider!

Although back to the OP; would the spider be big enough to eat a frog.....

 

[tsr]

I'm not terribly worried by the vast majority of creatures, and I'll happily be around pets of many descriptions (including lizards/snakes etc.), but spiders are the one category I loathe. It seems to be purely as a result of some mis-wired instinct; I've never had any particularly bad experiences with spiders/insects/etc. but my brain just reacts really badly, even to quite small ones.

I remember a few holidays when I was young, deep in various bits of the UK countryside, where there were houses with certain rooms I couldn't go in because I felt some great big house spider was stalking me. (Why do spiders like the countryside so much? Surely the density and choice of creepy crawlies is much better in an urban environment?) And so it goes on.

My tactic of choice is to use a large vacuum cleaner, with the carpet brush head removed, on full power mode. Normally they don't reappear after that. I had a dedicated spider vacuum cleaner once, but it wasn't powerful enough. As a result of that experience, I also like to keep the hoover at arm's length...

Funnily enough, if I'm out in the wild camping out somewhere, rather than in a building, I'm a lot calmer. The spiders tend to get interested in something else quite quickly, and disappear never to be seen again.

I have seen some truly massive stuff in the UK, though. I remember some huge spider dangling at head height from the top of a lamppost (!!!), partially absorbed in some sort of goo which it was dealing with, on a residential road near a school in my area a few years ago. I did wonder why almost everyone was crossing over the road until I got a bit closer! It must have been at least the size of a lunchbox and clearly terrified a lot of people. Then there was the wall-clock-sized "thing" I found in a barn conversion in the Scottish Borders, and something similar in an old mill in Somerset. I can promise you that despite my abject fears of these creatures, I am not exaggerating these matters. I have a fairly keen eye for dimensions; I used to study various graphic design disciplines where I spent years accurately estimate things about this size.

 

[najaB]

I'm not terribly worried by the vast majority of creatures, and I'll happily be around pets of many descriptions (including lizards/snakes etc.), but spiders are the one thing I loathe.

I'm fine with spiders (of the non bird-eating variety) but cannot abide centipedes or flying cockroaches.

 

[tsr]

I'm fine with spiders (of the non bird-eating variety) but cannot abide centipedes or flying cockroaches.

I can deal with cockroaches quite happily, centipedes reasonably well. I wouldn't go looking for them and I'd probably use something other than my bare hands to scoop them up, but they don't frighten me.

 

[najaB]

I can deal with cockroaches quite happily, centipedes reasonably well. I wouldn't go looking for them and I'd probably use something other than my bare hands to scoop them up, but they don't frighten me.

Having been bitten by centipedes a few times there's no way I'd go near them with anything other than a boot (to smash them with!)

Bear in mind, I'm speaking of these things:

(Image of a centipede).