Worse than finding a spider

My late husband was an ace spider catcher. Last autumn was my first solo "big spiders in the house" season. I gathered conkers and sprayed points of entry with peppermint spray.
It seemed to work. I only had a few tiddlers and a couple of those spindly legged ones, which I dealt with myself.

I think DH would have been proud of me.🙂

It does bring to mind the time we visited my grandmother in Italy and we were staying in an annexe to the old farmhouse, usually used for storage.
My phobia wasn't as bad back then for some reason. One night, on entering the bedroom, I spotted a whopper of a spider above the door. DH to the rescue, went to grab it off the wall ready to put it outside.
This spider had attitude. It leaped off the wall and grabbed his hand instead.
I've never seen him move so fast!

Fiorentina I’ve heard that for it to work best, you should drill a hole into the chestnut in order to release the oil’s aroma.

I’m not scared of any creatures, which is fortunate as I’m scared of pretty much everything else

I am happy to do a deal with any spiders I see in my home -

they are welcome to stay as long as they pay for their board by catching any flies and mosquitoes

I don’t mind them at all. They are useful. GS borrowed a pair of DH’s old clogs on Friday to use in the garden and they had been in the garage for a while and looked a bit “webby” and I emptied a rather large dead spider inside. He freaked out! What a wuss!😁

I have a real fear of big spiders. I always leave the bathroom washbasin with water in at night so that I don't disturb others when washing my hands and don't turn on the light, just have a nightlight 0on the landing. One night last year I washed my hands and felt something in the water like little slivers of wood between my fingers. This time I did put the light on and ----horror of horrors- I'd been sharing the water with a huge black spider which had dropped in and drowned. I felt really sorry for the spider, poor thing, but even sorrier for myself. I can still feel that matchstick sensation in my hands and shudder at the memory.

I recall reading that spiders hate horse chestnut essence. A sister has a plug-in electronic device she bought at the local hardware shop, that repels vermin but also spiders and insects. Apparently it works well.

I’m not keen on the big hairy spiders, but I do try to put them outside with a glass and paper but they move so quickly. I have less success with the spindly ones because the minute I touch them all their legs seem to fall off. I really don’t like daddy long legs, or crane flies though.

I had lots of large spiders on my narrow boat. They lurked under the top hatch, outside the shower room door, and dropped down.…
Impossible to get rid, so many places for them to hide.

I can't even think about the idea of a large spider on the loose somewhere in the house. I'd have to move somewhere else.

We had a resident spider we named Sid in our old cottage. He was huge and when he jumped off a shelf we could hear him running along the floor.
We never caught this spider. Too fast and lots of hiding places. He was still there when we moved out.

I have lovely mans who will take Mr Spider over the road to the village green to enjoy their long and blameless lives out of my ken.

In our household it would be DH shouting for me to deal with the spider. If it was a moth it would be the other way round. Secret of a long and happy marriage.

A phobia is a phobia. It's not rational. I had a zoologist friend who knew more about spiders than the average person, and he used to staple book pages closed when they had large spider pictures on them!
He even went to work in the British Antarctic Survey partly because he knew he'd never meet a spider in Antarctica.

Squiffy🤣🤣🤣

I don't mind spiders and any large scuttlers which run across the floor (probably doing the spidey equivalent of nah, nah, nah na-nah) are removed by the glass and sheet of card method and taken a distance outside and gently deposited elsewhere. Then the only exercise I get, running back inside, hoping it's not faster than me and getting back in before me. 😂
On the other hand, I can't stand slugs, no no no!

I love the sound of your Sid, AGAA4, We had a resident spider in the kitchen that the children named Oscar.

As others have said, mice are a different thing. In themselves they are probably quite sweet, but I don’t want them scuttling around the house. Something that really freaks me is slugs, horrible slimy things, but thankfully they don’t run, they just enjoy my plants if they get the chance.

You wouldn’t muck around with some of the ones we get, they can give you a nasty bite which can be fatal. Some of them make your skin rot and sometimes it just doesn’t heal for years. I never touch them.

NotAGran55

I don’t mind anything except dogs. I’m not scared generally , I just don’t like being ran at, jumped up on, or slobbered over when I’m out for a walk 🤮

I'm with you I can accept anything and give it a wide birth. Dogs I am terrified of and they know it. I hate it when out for a walk and they bark at you or try to get your sandwich. Their owners smile and say they won't hurt.
NO they will not hurt them but what will they do to me slobber and lick or try to mate with my leg?YUK I even had some sort of mountain dog jump at me put its paws on my shoulder and knock me over.

Worse than finding a spider - finding a snake in your broccoli!! In our local paper….

www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/national/uk-today/23628409.aldi-man-shocked-finding-snake-bag-broccoli/

Don’t mind many things though I was roused to action when I found ants in the kitchen a couple of years ago. My cat is a determined hunter, never kills anything, just brings it to the bedroom and drops it on the floor. I am now an expert mouse catcher and liberate the poor things - probably to be caught another night. Birds are not so easy to catch as they panic, dashing themselves against the walls. I have learned to open the windows wide and just wait until they find their own way out. He did bring in a small rat once. Now that did disturb me. The memory of that long, fat, pink tail still makes me shudder.
(My little cat is currently in the vet hospital recovering (thank goodness) from a nasty infection. I am ridiculously fond of him so have had a very stressful few days not knowing if was going to be okay. Like me he lets spiders live in peace.)

Love spiders ,fascinating ,dont understand the fear at all

I currently have a spider occupying our en suite, which is dark most of the time - he appears to only have seven legs so I call him Septimus. A good way to evict them is to pinch together one end of a kitchen towel tube and put the other end over the spider - they nearly always crawl into the dark tunnel, and then just shake them outside.

I used to be absolutely terrified of spiders but I joined a spider identification group on FB. It seemed to lessen my fear until I was sitting in bed during the summer last year and I felt something run up the inside of my thigh. I brushed it away and immediately I could tell it was big. I shot out of bed and put the light on. I couldn't find it anywhere so I popped to the loo and when I came back there sitting in the middle of my bed was a huge spider. I caught it in the bug catcher and put it outside. I didn't get any sleep for a few nights after and needless to say my phobia returned. I now spray around my door and window with pure lavender essential oil. That seems to keep them out with the added benefit of the lovely scent of lavender.

I like them and gently take them outside.

My Ddil is scared of spiders; she told me on the phone late one night that she had managed to capture a huge specimen in the bedroom and put it outside. When I soothingly said that she must feel better now and could sleep easily, she wailed 'But they ALWAYS have a friend!'.