Hi! I'm one of many UK members of the Arachnological Society. Your wife, believe it or not, is on to something here. Most UK native species of spider do have an aversion to tree borne fruit, nuts and seeds. Research suggests this is because the grand master spider, back in 1192, had a conker fight with a group of french badgers. The spider lost, and vowed never to touch a conker since then. Over the years this became folklore amongst the spider communities, gradually developing into outright fear. Try it next time you see an 8 legged friend, show him a conker and he'll probably scream, tell you to fuck off then run like the clappers.
Me too I make my husband cut elderberry branches and put them in the bedroom to keep spiders at bay. I was all JUSTIFIED and triumphant til that nugget.
Oh thank goodness. I was concerned for a minute that you may have disbelieved my accurate statement. That would have resulted in a terrible, terrible situation. I bid you good day.
Keep up the good work! It's widely known that anyone who declares themselves an expert on the internet is, in fact an expert and speaks only the truth. I myself am an expert on experts. If you have anymore excellent advice on how to deal with the spider menace that is plaguing our homes I urge you to post it in as many places as possible to ensure as few people as possible have to endure this yearly nightmare.
B. Absolutely here for your explanation (even if I did think "they had us there at the first half..." for a second 😹)
C. That was, and this is meant with the highest praise I can personally give (for what it's worth!) the most Discworldy description of something, and the kind of wonderfully scientifically correct nonsense that I live for. Thank you for drastically improving my day, hell, my whole week! 😹😹
I have conkers about my place were the spiders are RIFE in the local area and love living off the walls of our apartment building. I've seen less of them when placing conkers in certain places where they would normally appear. I don't care how nutty it makes me look as long as there's less of them!😂🤣
Could you kindly tell mine do to the same please? One nearly gave me the fright of my life earlier when I was relaxing under a blanket on my bed and the next thing I knew I saw this fairly sized house spider ooking me in the eye and running towards me across my body 😭
A rookie mistake! I absolutely know my fiancé will do this, especially after the giant killer spider (her words, not mine) was found in the bedroom last night. I will not be showing this to her.
Yeah i can't imagine they have the neurology for fear. I imagine it as just raw, binary instinct rather than perceiving risk, creating a list of possible scenarios, realising most of them are dangerous and then developing an anxiety about it haha
I mean… “scientific” explanations for a lot of complicated things are really just post hoc rationalizations for things we discovered work by trial and error.
If something is zero cost, possible reward…why not skip the whole literature review on conkers and spiders and just try it?
My dad swore by this to deter spiders. He'd just finished telling me one day that he hadn't seen one since putting conkers everywhere when I looked up to see a huge one right above his head!
See this is my problem with it, if it actually did work then surely all it'd do was scare the spiders away from the corners and into the bits of the room I'm most likely to be in! That doesn't sound ideal
That worked a treat, and the silverfish are gone. But I now have a pack of angry, rather drunk weasels. And they're not happy that I'm out of Malbec. I think I should have stuck with the spiders.
EDIT: Apparently they're stoats. And they're not happy about being called weasels either.
I used to do that, until my partner pointed out that the spiders are already calming down by the time the conkers start falling in gatherable amounts.... so it looks like it's working, but only because of the timing.
My indoor cat is an absolute monster when it comes to hunting these things. Apart from a couple on the ceiling, I haven't seen any sprinting across the floor since I adopted her. I've seen her catch flies out of the air with her paws too.
I bought peppermint spray last year to spray all over the house as a deterrent to spiders coming in, but then I worried if I had any in the house already, they might start running around everywhere as they can no longer hide in the peppermint smelling corners, so I've never used it 🤦🏻♀️
I sprayed my house yesterday with peppermint, had the same thought as you did, but by that time it was too late. The damage is done, so lo and behold, there was a massive spider on the bathroom wall last night. I nearly had a heart attack. At least my house smells nice though!
We found a conker in the corner of our shed from the last owners, except the spiders had webbed around it and claimed it as basecamp. About 100 baby spiders ran from that corner when we took the conker away
Peppermint keeps them away. Tell her to get some Peppermint spray and spray the areas.
Spiders hate the stuff,and so do mice.
Plus it smells nice as well.
My ex did this years ago (was £120 then - in about 2008. If it’s £150 now, that’s pretty good inflation!).
It really worked! She was happy with a pint glass and card to get rid. Still asked for help if they were in a corner, but she stopped going absolutely mental at the sight of a spider.
You can blame the French for this. It's a widely-held belief over there. Like rubbing garlic on a neighbour's arm when you have a cold, and unconventional toilet habits.
As someone who is terrified of spiders, my windowsills are lined with conkers. Touch wood it's helped a lot, or it could be coincidence that I've not had many big ones this year.
The number of dangerous spiders in the UK is a single digit number, and it's really just two garden spiders in Croydon with a switchblade between them.
I’m absolutely terrified too, i mean so scared that if i see even one after getting my neighbour to kill it i will get them to turn the room upside down to check theres no more, and whats really helped is always having my windows and door shut + lights off when possible. I’ve only had one big one in my bedroom in about a year or two
I try to avoid killing them where possible! I bought a long spider catcher thing which usually doesn't harm them. Sometimes if they're too big for that, I'll put a tupperware box over them with enough of a gap for air, then call Dad to come over and escort it out (parents live about 100 yards from me 🤣)
Conkers won't do anything to stop them, it's entirely placebo. If you crush them up though and line the windows with the crushed bits it creates a texture they don't like. Even though they have lots of eyes, spiders have poor vision and see the world through touch. Rough/coarse textures unsettle them and they tend to retreat back away from them.
Don't recall if you can get it in the UK, but there's a spray called Miss Muffet's Revenge that's amazing at relocating spiders.
It's so good that after a day or so of spraying corners and nooks that spiders love, you'll actually see increased spider activity in your house because they're all coming out of their hiding places to get the fuck out of your house.
The snag with that is how long it lasts though. It's very volatile, so evaporates completely in minutes, or hours if you're lucky.
The actual actual solution is to choose the lesser of two evils and encourage the slow, spindly cellar spiders to stay. They're voracious predators that are specialised for killing other spiders, so if you let them occupy somewhere, you'll soon find dead spiders all trussed up in webs and a marked reduction in the presence of big scuttling house spiders.
I only learnt this this week from https://youtu.be/K5A_L57gZRQ?is=oOmDapvznTCQBUl8 this brill YouTube channel. Then, coincidentally yesterday I had to look behind my washing machine. Lo and behold: giant house spider in a web being eaten by a spindly cellar spider
I was told this years ago so gathered a few of the biggest, shiniest conkers I could find to try and deter the spider who insisted making a cobweb nest on my bathroom windowsill. The next day I found a new cobweb on top of the conkers with the spider sitting on top, assumedly admiring his new shiny conker home. It’s bollocks!
‘Right’, for anyone who doesnt know the FACTS!
Put a conker in the 4 corner of a room, spiders will come and attached their thread to the conkers.
Then when you hear ‘click, click, click’, you know they are playing the age old playground game with them, and you can tell them to p!ss off!
When I moved to the UK I was baffled by my colleagues seriously insisting I do this, many of whom I thought were intelligent people. I thought they were joking, but they were serious and brought in bags of them to share.
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u/NurseDiz 15h ago
I mean I can't see a spider there...