How to spider-proof your home

You may have noticed them scuttling across your laminate flooring, or dropping from the ceiling, fangs glistening, hairy legs outstretched, all eight of them.

If they’re not in your home yet, they will be. They’re coming, and this year according to reports, some are as big as rats. It’s spider season. Arachnophobes, be afraid, be very afraid.

Late August and early autumn mark the start of spider mating season, when millions of sex-crazed male spiders go looking for hook-ups and end up indoors.

For those of us unbothered by creepy-crawlies, it may all seem like a fuss but, having lived with an arachnophobe for over a decade, I can understand how terrifying this time of year can be. Our domestic peace is frequently punctuated by blood-curdling screams followed by hyperventilated demands of ‘kill it, kill it’. A glass and a sheet of paper usually suffices. The cat, cited by some as an anti-spider measure a household can employ, is uselessly uninterested.

Meg Skinner is an arachnid expert at the British Arachnological Society (BAS). She explains why this is a particularly spidery time of year.

“Spiders are around our homes and gardens all year round but now we are seeing a lot more house spiders in homes,” she says. “They are bigger, and they tend to wander around, rather than hide in corners. This is because the ones we encounter are usually males looking for females to mate with. The females generally stay in one spot in a corner.”

Indeed, the idea that spiders enter homes for warmth at this time of year is a myth, adds Skinner.

“They don’t like heat. They prefer cooler, damp conditions.”

Another misconception is that they invade through pipes.

“You find them in the bathtub because they fall in and can’t get out,” she says.

Husband and wife Ray and Angela Hale, of the British Tarantula Society, are spider lovers but sympathise with arachnophobes. Each year they deliver several life-changing courses at Drusillas Park zoo in East Sussex that help participants cure their spider phobia. The zoo claims a 100 per cent success record.

“We know a lot of people live in fear, but there is no good reason to be afraid of spiders. The vast majority of the world’s spiders are harmless and there are no dangerous spiders in the UK. Even the big spiders such as tarantulas don’t want to hurt you. They are very docile and quite friendly if you give them a chance,” says Ray.

Angela, who has a collection of more than 100 spiders in her spare bedroom and leads spider hunting expeditions in Borneo, adds: “Here in the UK we have over 800 different types of spiders. They are extremely helpful and harmless creatures, but despite this, they instil fear in many and have a terrible reputation. People don’t always realise these little wonders consume countless crop-destroying, disease-carrying insects annually, saving both livelihoods and lives.”

In addition to house spiders, which are large with a brown cephalothorax (the fused head and thorax) and a tan-coloured abdomen that often has a characteristic herringbone pattern, the other most common spider found indoors is the cellar spider, also known as a daddy-long-legs. These have a very small greyish body and long thin spindly legs. They prefer the warm and constant temperatures of our homes, garages and sheds, and are rarely found outdoors as they cannot survive winter temperatures.

Less commonly found indoors are false widow spiders (of which there are six subspecies in the UK). They bear a resemblance to the notorious black widow spider but are not as harmful, although they can deliver a small, relatively harmless bite.

The one consolation for spider-phobes is that you are unlikely to encounter the UK’s largest breed of spider in your bathtub. The fen raft spider, which can grow to the size of a rat and hunts fish, lives in fens, marshes and wetlands. They were almost extinct in 2010 when only a handful remained due to habitat loss. Their numbers are now steadily increasing thanks to conservation efforts.

Opinion is mixed on whether you can effectively keep spiders out of your home. Spider repellent devices which claim to use ultrasonic waves to cause ‘auditory stress’ to spiders are available but zoologist Luis Villazon says numerous studies have failed to show anything more than a very temporary effect.

“Spiders and most insects don’t have ears and are mostly sensitive to vibrations below 1KHz,” he says.

If you do find one in your home, removing it outdoors will be doing it a favour, according to the Natural History Museum, because few spiders can comfortably live in modern centrally heated homes.

Skinner, who feared house spiders when she was young, says the best way to cope with fear is to try and understand spiders and learn to appreciate them and live with them. She advises that they are more likely to be found in rooms near an entrance to the outside, and that the best way to remove them is to encourage them into a pillowcase or use a jam jar or glass with a piece of card or paper to stop them escaping.

“Be gentle, slow and calm, because the more you panic and move, the faster they’ll move. They won’t necessarily try and get back in if you release them outside, they will wander off,” she says.

The BAS advises returning housebound spiders to a shed, garage or similar place ‘as the outside is not their habitat and it is a bit cruel’ and advises parents to teach children to be aware of spiders and to leave them alone, ‘but also to respect them and not to be afraid’. Fear of spiders is learnt. Children initially have no fear of spiders but learn it from parents or friends who dislike or are frightened of them. So, the best way to cope with them? Learn to love them.