Nebulous Mooch

The name sounds completely made up to me, but I found out that our spidery little friends are called tegenaria deomestica. They’re more commonly known as the British house spider.

We’ve had an interesting time with the spiders this past weekend. My husband and stepson decided to put two in the same plastic container and watch them spar to the death. I was not happy. I don’t like them, but I don’t want to be cruel to them either. When I expressed my disapproval they both said, “We just wanted to see what would happen.” Typical. Later my husband said he felt guilty.

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the spiders, we have to work on getting rid of the ants under the sink and the loud clumsy bumble bees that come through our bedroom vent in the mornings. Bees are such early risers. If they would just keep it down, I wouldn’t mind their morning visits.

Does anyone know what these spiders are? Are they dangerous? Now that we’ve found one, they keep turning up. My husband caught another one today in a container. It’s sitting on the windowsill. They’re quite large. My husband says they’re harmless, but I’m not so sure.

I’m going to be accused of exaggerating, but this is a life-sized photo of the spider that was on the wall in my stepson’s room this morning. It’s now in a plastic container on the windowsill in the living room. “I want to keep this so I can look at it when I get home,” my husband said after he caught it. Then he left for the day. I’ve been keeping an eye on the spider and she hasn’t done much. If I turn the container slowly she hops up in the air. If I put my finger near the wall of the container she lunges at it. If I leave her alone she just sits there. I’ve decided I don’t like her. She’s creepy and obviously can’t be trusted.

What is it about spiders that makes them so creepy? I’ve been looking at this one carefully and I’ve decided that, besides the fact that she wants to chomp down on my finger, it might be the hairiness. Those eight long fuzzy legs are creepy. I wouldn’t trust a person with eight fuzzy legs, why would I trust a spider?