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I'm of course happy to know they're harmless and (as far as we can tell) not horribly dangerous for the ecosystem, but speaking as someone who A) has arachnoph

I'm of course happy to know they're harmless and (as far as we can tell) not horribly dangerous for the ecosystem, but speaking as someone who A) has arachnophobia and a general fear of insects, and B) lives completely alone and can't get someone else to deal with stuff like this for me, would someone who lives in Georgia be willing to confirm to me whether or not they come into houses, and how serious of a game plan I need to make for dealing with them? I deal with house centipedes/crickets[0] with Raid and then scooping up the body after they're dead. Setting up bug barriers, keeping things clean, and keeping down any other insect populations that they'd feed on seems to deal with most everything else. Tiny bugs like boxelder bugs show up rarely, and are small enough that I can squish them without much trouble, but anything bigger than an inch is tough to deal with. So if I'm likely to find one of these on my wall in my living room (even just occasionally), I legitimately need to plan ahead and figure out a one-person strategy for killing/moving them out of my house in a way that it isn't traumatizing, and if conventional bug barriers don't work to keep them out then I need to figure out something else for reducing the likelihood of them coming in the house. If they're just outside, that's not so much of a problem, big bugs are fine outside, although it'll likely put a bit of a damper on my willingness to go hiking in wood trails given people's descriptions of the webs. ---- [0]: Yes, I know house centipedes are positive predators to have around and shouldn't be treated as pests, but I need to be able to walk into my bathroom without worrying I'll find one on the wall.

pg_bot 5y ago
I live in SC and have seen some of these spiders. None of them have come inside our property, they like to build very large webs between trees and hangout there.
pvaldes 5y ago
Get a cat. End of the problem. They can't resist to hit with their paws anything that moves until it stops moving. Pet chickens will also clean any surface of arthropods and remove the offenders. You'll need a chicken diaper, of course.
GrinningFool 5y ago
You might want to look into 'bug grabbers'. We have one and it really does work as advertised. We use it regularly on large spiders, stink bugs, and occasional wasps.
- danShumway 5y ago
  Maybe silly question, but how do you get the insect back out in a controlled way? I assume they don't die inside of there. I have a vacuum with a detachable wand, but I've never really used it for insects because I always felt like... now what? Can't they just crawl back out? Also slightly skeptical of a handheld grabber or my vacuum's ability to handle a 3 inch spider, but maybe I'm overestimating their grabbing strength. I guess I could also upgrade.
  - GrinningFool 5y ago
    I've only ever had to pull the release, and they drop out (sometimes with a little shake). Surprisingly, it's never harmed them. We have picked up wolf spiders of that size with it. The spider reflexively plays dead and gets small but runs off on release.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      Huh. Maybe I should give one a try then.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
doctoring 5y ago
I was visiting family in NE Atlanta last fall. These spiders were everywhere -- coating houses, trees, power lines. And yet, they do not seem to come into homes. Even the exterminators they called said so.
- danShumway 5y ago
  Assuming you're correct, hearing this genuinely makes me feel way better. It's not even necessarily a complete avoidance thing -- seeing a large insect when I'm outside just feels different; it's something I'm more prepped for, I'm in a different mental state. Huge boon if I'll mostly only need to worry about them when biking/walking.
throwanem 5y ago
Orb weavers rarely enter human dwellings, although they do quite like porches for the combination of good web substrate and the prey-attracting effect of porch lights and lit windows. I've only had an orb weaver in the house a couple of times, and once ushered back out they typically remain so. One of them, a young red orb weaver, abseiled down from the ceiling onto my bare shoulder - I'm not sure which of us was more surprised, but even if I didn't like spiders quite well in general, I think her evident terror upon realizing her mistake would have aroused some degree of sympathy. Most spiders you'll encounter indoors in the eastern US will be cobweb spiders, of which family black widows are by far the most famous - but also very rare, with more typically encountered cobweb spiders being quite harmless to humans. (Of course, so are widows, when given proper respect, as with the one who overwintered behind the toilet tank one year when I was ten or so. She kept to herself and so did we, and we all got along fine - and they are such beautiful creatures!) Beyond that you can expect the occasional wolf spider, salticid, or the like, these being cursorial hunters and thus not so much homebodies as spiders generally tend to be.
- danShumway 5y ago
  Living away from a river/woods and keeping my house relatively bug free in general means that I generally don't see any large spiders in my house at all. Some of that might be due to declining insect populations though. We had orb weavers all over our porch growing up, slightly terrifying to enter/leave the house if you're scared of them, you had to kind of walk through this tunnel of webs to get in and out. But I think a lot of their presence was environmental factors, being in a rural area right next to a river. If these follow the same rules, I'm relieved, I already mostly know how to manage orb weavers and how to avoid them. > I think her evident terror upon realizing her mistake would have aroused some degree of sympathy. Important to keep in mind that arachnophobia isn't really a rational thing; I can appreciate both the beauty and usefulness of some insects/spiders, and even have contexts where seeing them doesn't frighten me. If you're going to manage insect populations in a dwelling place you kind of have to be able to think about them as being part of an ecosystem, you don't really have a choice. But appreciating spiders or even admiring them doesn't change anything about fear of encountering them in certain situations. You can't logic your way out of an irrational fear, you just learn to manage it or you train yourself to deal with it or overcome it to at least some degree (depending on how far you're willing to go to change your instincts or avoid triggers). Telling yourself that they're not evil, or that they're harmless, or that they're more scared of you -- that stuff only really helps if those are the reasons you're afraid. But for most people, I think their reactions aren't really conscious or voluntary. Another example is creatures like rodents. I keep pet rats, some of my relatives are pretty scared to be around them. It's not based on anything rational, they know the rats are harmless and cuddly and smart. It's just that they see the tail/hands and it freaks them out to be around them or to think about them. I'm not affected by that, I don't really understand the feeling because I don't feel any aversion to holding them or having them crawl around on me, my brain just registers them as cute. I never had to overcome anything to be able to hold them, my brain had the opposite reaction and immediately wanted to hold them as soon as I saw them. My family and I have the same information and understanding about rats, but for some of my family members there's a subconscious, emotional aversion that they have to overcome even to be in the same room, and for me there's just not. I'm a little envious of people who don't have an innate fear of insects or instinctual fears around them. I've worked reasonably hard to get it to a manageable level where I can live alone comfortably and where I'm mostly not worried about insects most of the time, and it doesn't disrupt my life -- but that was difficult to do, it was a lot of work; definitely not quite as simple as just learning more about them.
mkr-hn 5y ago
No Joro spiders inside so far. At least 50 around the house, going by webs, but none inside. They kept their distance outside.

pg_bot 5y ago

I live in SC and have seen some of these spiders. None of them have come inside our property, they like to build very large webs between trees and hangout there.

pvaldes 5y ago

Get a cat. End of the problem. They can't resist to hit with their paws anything that moves until it stops moving. Pet chickens will also clean any surface of arthropods and remove the offenders. You'll need a chicken diaper, of course.

GrinningFool 5y ago

You might want to look into 'bug grabbers'. We have one and it really does work as advertised. We use it regularly on large spiders, stink bugs, and occasional wasps.

danShumway 5y ago
Maybe silly question, but how do you get the insect back out in a controlled way? I assume they don't die inside of there. I have a vacuum with a detachable wand, but I've never really used it for insects because I always felt like... now what? Can't they just crawl back out? Also slightly skeptical of a handheld grabber or my vacuum's ability to handle a 3 inch spider, but maybe I'm overestimating their grabbing strength. I guess I could also upgrade.
- GrinningFool 5y ago
  I've only ever had to pull the release, and they drop out (sometimes with a little shake). Surprisingly, it's never harmed them. We have picked up wolf spiders of that size with it. The spider reflexively plays dead and gets small but runs off on release.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Huh. Maybe I should give one a try then.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

doctoring 5y ago

I was visiting family in NE Atlanta last fall. These spiders were everywhere -- coating houses, trees, power lines. And yet, they do not seem to come into homes. Even the exterminators they called said so.

danShumway 5y ago
Assuming you're correct, hearing this genuinely makes me feel way better. It's not even necessarily a complete avoidance thing -- seeing a large insect when I'm outside just feels different; it's something I'm more prepped for, I'm in a different mental state. Huge boon if I'll mostly only need to worry about them when biking/walking.

throwanem 5y ago

Orb weavers rarely enter human dwellings, although they do quite like porches for the combination of good web substrate and the prey-attracting effect of porch lights and lit windows. I've only had an orb weaver in the house a couple of times, and once ushered back out they typically remain so. One of them, a young red orb weaver, abseiled down from the ceiling onto my bare shoulder - I'm not sure which of us was more surprised, but even if I didn't like spiders quite well in general, I think her evident terror upon realizing her mistake would have aroused some degree of sympathy. Most spiders you'll encounter indoors in the eastern US will be cobweb spiders, of which family black widows are by far the most famous - but also very rare, with more typically encountered cobweb spiders being quite harmless to humans. (Of course, so are widows, when given proper respect, as with the one who overwintered behind the toilet tank one year when I was ten or so. She kept to herself and so did we, and we all got along fine - and they are such beautiful creatures!) Beyond that you can expect the occasional wolf spider, salticid, or the like, these being cursorial hunters and thus not so much homebodies as spiders generally tend to be.

danShumway 5y ago
Living away from a river/woods and keeping my house relatively bug free in general means that I generally don't see any large spiders in my house at all. Some of that might be due to declining insect populations though. We had orb weavers all over our porch growing up, slightly terrifying to enter/leave the house if you're scared of them, you had to kind of walk through this tunnel of webs to get in and out. But I think a lot of their presence was environmental factors, being in a rural area right next to a river. If these follow the same rules, I'm relieved, I already mostly know how to manage orb weavers and how to avoid them. > I think her evident terror upon realizing her mistake would have aroused some degree of sympathy. Important to keep in mind that arachnophobia isn't really a rational thing; I can appreciate both the beauty and usefulness of some insects/spiders, and even have contexts where seeing them doesn't frighten me. If you're going to manage insect populations in a dwelling place you kind of have to be able to think about them as being part of an ecosystem, you don't really have a choice. But appreciating spiders or even admiring them doesn't change anything about fear of encountering them in certain situations. You can't logic your way out of an irrational fear, you just learn to manage it or you train yourself to deal with it or overcome it to at least some degree (depending on how far you're willing to go to change your instincts or avoid triggers). Telling yourself that they're not evil, or that they're harmless, or that they're more scared of you -- that stuff only really helps if those are the reasons you're afraid. But for most people, I think their reactions aren't really conscious or voluntary. Another example is creatures like rodents. I keep pet rats, some of my relatives are pretty scared to be around them. It's not based on anything rational, they know the rats are harmless and cuddly and smart. It's just that they see the tail/hands and it freaks them out to be around them or to think about them. I'm not affected by that, I don't really understand the feeling because I don't feel any aversion to holding them or having them crawl around on me, my brain just registers them as cute. I never had to overcome anything to be able to hold them, my brain had the opposite reaction and immediately wanted to hold them as soon as I saw them. My family and I have the same information and understanding about rats, but for some of my family members there's a subconscious, emotional aversion that they have to overcome even to be in the same room, and for me there's just not. I'm a little envious of people who don't have an innate fear of insects or instinctual fears around them. I've worked reasonably hard to get it to a manageable level where I can live alone comfortably and where I'm mostly not worried about insects most of the time, and it doesn't disrupt my life -- but that was difficult to do, it was a lot of work; definitely not quite as simple as just learning more about them.

mkr-hn 5y ago

No Joro spiders inside so far. At least 50 around the house, going by webs, but none inside. They kept their distance outside.