In a basement suite I was in Vancouver I used to live in, I found a couple of spiders aorund 3-4 inches in diameter. They were tough #######s. I couldn't kill them with a broom, only pin them temporarily. It took 5 or 6 good wacks with the broom pan to finish them off. Thankfully, I've only ran across them a few times during my time in Vancouver.
3-4 inches in diameter?! Were they tarantulas?! Christ. Hitting them with a dust pan must have made one hell of a mess.
*shudder*
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3-4 inches in diameter?! Were they tarantulas?! Christ. Hitting them with a dust pan must have made one hell of a mess.
*shudder*
Naw. A lot of the size is just legs. Google it and you can get a good idea of how big they get. But decent mess. I couldn't believe how fast and durable these things were. I jabbed at one of them with a broom many times with no affect. Then I was wacking it with the dust pan as hard as I could. Granted, dust pans aren't the heaviest of wacking instruments, but still.
From wikipedia:
Quote:
Males can often be seen wandering around houses during the late summer and early autumn looking for a mate.
Apparently he was just looking for a little fun....
Naw. A lot of the size is just legs. Google it and you can get a good idea of how big they get. But decent mess. I couldn't believe how fast and durable these things were. I jabbed at one of them with a broom many times with no affect. Then I was wacking it with the dust pan as hard as I could. Granted, dust pans aren't the heaviest of wacking instruments, but still.
Next time you could just spray it with Hairspray or Window Cleaner, that should kill the bugger, and easier to clean also.
Next time you could just spray it with Hairspray or Window Cleaner, that should kill the bugger, and easier to clean also.
I was a 24 year old male, and living in a basement suite that was crappy enough to have giant spiders in it. Do you really think I had either of those products.
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I live in Elgin (pretty sure its actually a couple blocks south of KTrain), and I don't notice the spiders much. What I do notice is every morning I open my back gate and get a spider web across the face.
It's a price you pay for living in a new community. Give it 10 or 15 years and things will even out. Like Troutman said, they are eating insects like mosquitoes so they are not all bad.
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I live in the opposite corner of the city, but I don't mind the spiders. Admittedly, I don't have as many around as you do. But I do allow one to live on my back light because he really does keep the moth and mosquito population in check. The past two years I have had one living there on the light (presumably relatives), and we have learned to coexist. When I unlock the back door I always look up what's going on. During the day, not much, but at night it is sometimes a full-on insect feast.
Here's what he looked like - apparently they're called "wood spiders" around these parts. The photo makes it look scarier and bigger than he was, however. At his peak plumpness, his body was about the size of a jellybean. (not my photo):
NSFW!
I was actually a little sad when he started to get smaller and smaller as the weather got colder in the fall. He lasted surprisingly long, but during a cold snap and snowfall he finally packed it in and his little corpse was sitting on top of the garbage can on the fresh snow.
All of that being said, stay the #### out of my house. Although, on the odd occasion that I find a spider in my house (small ones - never as big as my pal on the light), I always try and get them outside instead of killing them.
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All of this talk of spiders brought up a horrible memory of when I was backpacking in Australia after I graduated from high school.
I had gone out to the bar with a number of people to watch a friends band play one night. After a number of drinks I decided to go for a walk outside to get some "fresh air" and wandered down to the beach for a few minutes. Incredibly inebriated at this point, I figure I should probably head back to the bar and begin to make my way there. I'm walking down a sidewalk with a really tall manicured hedge on my right that had to be a good 8 to 10 feet tall.
There are lamp posts on my left, between myself and the street. As I reach one of the lamp posts (I'm walking in between it and the hedge) I suddenly feel my ENTIRE BODY, from head to toe, COVERED in a gigantic spider web. Now I'm not a small guy, I'm a good 6'4", 200 pounds.
Also keep in mind that this web was not empty. Just as I realized what I had walked into, I also realized that something big had hit my chest. The mother of all spiders. Considering that I could feel the weight of it (it was heavy) and the area of my chest that I had felt the impact on, the BODY of this thing (not including the legs) had to be somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. I'm not kidding.
As it hit my chest, it reacted quickly. It scampered up my chest, over my shoulder, and down the back of my arm.
I screamed. Loud. I'd never screamed in such pure terror before or since. I flung my arm as hard as I could and literally threw the beast from hell into the street and ran. Refusing to look back, I ran faster than I thought possible all the way back to the bar.
As I walked back into the bar, all eyes were suddenly on me. The looks in everyone's eyes were terrifying. I looked down at myself for the first time and tried to comprehend what I was looking at. I was covered in sticky white threads. Everywhere. It took everything I had not to throw up in disgust. I spent the rest of the night trying to pick all of the webs off of myself and shivering in terror and disgust as what had happened replayed in my head over and over and over again.
Worst experience of my life. I. Hate. Spiders.
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