"If You Wish to Live and Thrive, Let a Spider Run Alive"

This is a Hobo Spider

Thanks google for providing me with this photo that will surely gross/ freak out some friends and family

They're not native to America but found their way over here sometime in the early 20th century and have spread throughout NorthWest America. And while their bites do require medical attention, they aren't deadly. Now is the time of year when they start "house hunting" for the coming cold weather (ie they start getting into peoples houses. We live in a duplex and my neighbor on the other side of the house found two last night--one in her bedroom and one in her daughters. I have seen none which is odd because our part the house is lower and adjacent to the garage and therefore more likely to be the happy home of little critters like these. I'm not the type of girl to be scared of spiders. Not to long ago a found in 8-legged friend in the living room near my house plants. my thoughts at the time: "Make yourself at home, you can eat all the gnats that cropped up after we bought a bag of potting soil that the parent gnats had laid eggs in before it was bagged in sold". Then I think Mr Baker killed it a later when I told him about it. Although he did have point: spider's carry germs just like any other bug and it's not safe for Poppyseed. So we've reached a compromise: he will kill any spider he finds, and I 'll catch them and set them free outside if I find them. After all spider's eat bugs, people hate bugs= spider's aren't that bad. However I worry about Poppyseed's health and safety should there be any Hobo spiders in the house so today I took a healthy walk to Walmart and looked for some kind of anti-spider stuff--Something I never thought I'd do. I was raised in the South and the bug and pest problem is a million times worse there than it is here. More mosquitos, more ticks, more flies, more gnats, more spiders. My cousin, Mads, told me once about how her husband, Javi, from the LA went inside the house after receiving one mere mosquito bite from sitting outside. We just slap the little suckers when they get close and just ignore the bites if we're over the age of 13. The mosquitos aren't nearly as vicious up here as they are back in "Dixie Land", they practically ask your permission before biting you. Nope bugs aren't a big deal to me out here in Idaho.  So shopping for pest control seems quite unnatural and not my style. I remember standing there in the aisle, my thoughts switching back and forth between "I don't want to be one of those neurotic, helicopter moms" and "Is this going to be chemically safe for me and the baby" ---ironic, I know! Talk about playing both ends of the piano. In the end I decided to actually look up the effects of a hobo spider bite on a baby before buying something. Remember the old adage I used as a title "If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive" I heard it many years ago from my friend Heather Reynold's mom. I looked it up, it's from the middle ages when finding a spider near or on you was considered an omen for good luck--I originally figured it was a sign that the spider would simply eat all the bugs in your house. Well there is some truth to the saying: If you don't mind spiders you won't spend the money on spider traps and repellent. Even so I'm pretty sure we'll still be shelling out the $5-$10 on pest control just to be safe.