Rex Trulove
Many people totally love the fall. I don’t mind it, but I’m more of a spring person. For one thing, in the fall, we end up with critters that get into the house to avoid the cold. This includes mice and our cats have already caught one. It also includes flies. Late in the fall, these get in from outside every chance they get. I dislike flies. However, it also means the inclusion of the unexpected guest I mentioned in the title.
Last night, I noticed her high up in the doorway of my computer room; a pretty female giant orb spider. The doorway is where she spun her intricate web.
Now, I know that a lot of people fear or dislike spiders. I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to have one as a pet. However, I don’t fear them like our daughter did when she was here. This one also isn’t full-sized yet. She is only about a half-inch across. However, she’s already caught a few flies and since I dislike flies more than I dislike spiders, I’m not prone to get rid of her. It is likely that she will move on of her own accord once the flies die off.
My wife, who also isn’t much of a fan of spiders, even gave her a name; Charlotte. Naturally, that is to say that ‘Charlotte’s web’ is in the doorway to the computer room. Since I’m six foot three, it does mean that I keep bumping into and taking out the lower part of the web, but when I do, she simply rebuilds. She does that very rapidly, too.
Again, I’m really not crazy about spiders, but I rather loathe flies. I could go to the time and expense of making and hanging flypaper, but at least for now, Charlotte is doing her part to take out as many flies as she can. The picture isn’t very good because she is currently on the ceiling just outside the door and that spot is in darkness.
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What would your reaction be if you found a giant orb spider web in your house?
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Kill it
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Leave it alone
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Take it outside
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I would take it’s picture, then kill it.
She is doing no harm, so I’m just letting her be. When there is nothing left to eat, I’m pretty sure that she’ll leave without prompting.
Well they are cool to watch grow. I had a baby in my garden this spring, one of those yellow striped ones. I let her be, they are really awesome spiders. But my arachnophobia sets in when they come inside. I cannot even catch them to release them.
Our daughter is the same way. In this particular case, I wasn’t even aware that she was there until I ran into the support strands for her web. She is quite unobtrusive and I doubt that people would ever see her if they visited. The guy who hooked up our Internet never saw her, and he walked directly under her web.
lol, I would notice her. Your ceilings must be high, if you just ran into the support strands…
Not really. The ceiling is about 8 feet, but I’m 6 feet, 3 inches and orb spiders are known for making very large webs.
True, I have shot pictures of just the webs. Amazing. I am 5’4, I probably wouldn’t have to worry as I come up to your waste. lol
We had fat brown spiders coming up from our basement, Whenever we saw one in our old house in Latvia we got it into a jar and dumped it outside. Here I have not met up with any spiders but I do hate those big flying cockroaches,
Cockroaches are almost never seen here. Our weather gets cold enough that it kills them. The brown spiders sound like wood spiders. They can give a painful bite.
Actually, my first reaction would be to photograph it. We get a lot of orb weavers on our back porch but we’ve never had one inside that I knew about.
That is where we usually get them; on the back porch. We did have one on the inside of the front screen door a couple of months ago, when we first started having cold weather, and I still don’t know how it got there, but this is a first for having one inside the house. Folklore would say that it is a sign of an especially brutal winter coming.
We get a lot of tiny spiders in our house but we’ve never had an orb weaver, or any spider that size, in the house that we know of. My wife did get a spider bite about a month ago which, based on the distance between the fang marks, must have been at least as big as a. We didn’t see it, however. orb weaver