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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

As a person who hates to kill bugs (they're alive and absolutely required in nature), I have an agreement with them in my mind:

- The outside is yours, you can do whatever you want there.

- Inside the walls is my own territory. I want you in minimum numbers there.

- If you're an harmless bug (most except cockroaches, centipedes and venomous animals), I'll transport you to nature with utmost care.

Notes:

- Balconies are outside.

- I'll try my best to not to poison outside or kill you in high numbers unless you try to invade my home.

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My wife had "Kill on sight" policy for spiders. Lots of screaming included. I have negotiated for them "safe escort to backyard" policy some time ago. Feel much better about them now.

Even after a brown recluse bite, I still will not harm spiders and generally let them be, unless they keep trying to drown themselves in my shower, in which case it is Spider Rescue Time.

One spider took up residence in an upper corner of my shower during a time when I had a bizarrely intractable issue with drain flies. All well and good. We developed a routine: I had a series of taps on the stall I would deliver, which was Shower Spider's cue to retreat to the web. I then showered and left multiple large drops of water on the nearby ledge to drink. At all times I would fling drain flies (and other randomly encountered bugs) into the web for devouring.

Shower Spider died one day and I was never able to determine why. Water and bugs were delivered by me on the regular. We had a really good working relationship. Other Shower Spiders have come and gone, but the first one was a real trooper.

Probably killed itself out of boredom at having such an easy-going life. Alternatively, there was something toxic in the water which they were drinking.

In a sense spiders are part of the problem - insect killers. I keep one in the kitchen window, and a little jumping one lives on the bedroom roof, migrates across to the windows a couple of times a day, but all others strictly belong outside.

Jumping spiders are amazing, and have such complex behaviour and the ability to learn. For sure tiny creatures they pack a lot in.

I love spiders but avoid touching them if I can.

Jumping spiders make for great pets. Watching them hunt is fascinating, they'll crawl all over anything you put in the terrarium, and they can go without food for weeks at a time. Very low maintenance. And they're usually comfortable with climbing into your palm. I don't do it, because I worry about injuring or stressing them, but my wife loves it. We've never been bitten by a jumping spider.

If you don't like the idea of catching and caging spiders, keep one by a window. The small amount of webbing they leave isn't prominent, unless they have trouble climbing (like in glass terrariums).

Sadly they aren't wild here in the UK, but I've read a lot about them and enjoy the local spiders we get here. Spiders and octopus definitely would be ruling the world if they wanted to.

My wife and I are apparently both in the subset of the population for whom Charlotte's Web made a big impression. We leave spiders alone and let them (or the cat) do most of our dirty work. Other arthropods get a paper-towel ride to the yard.

I allow non-web-making spiders to stay inside, and I escort non-venomous web-making spiders outside. Anything venomous that can come back around and hurt me or my family gets a quick warrior's death.

My policy is ignore them unless my wife complains (she hates big bugs for some reason) or they can cause harm to us or our dogs (yellow jackets, centipedes).

For the former I'll make an attempt to capture and transport outside (and if not I'll leave it alone), if it's the latter I'll either try to shoo it outside or kill it, with killing being the last resort.

I don't use pesticides or weed killer and I also actively leave a couple patches of wild flowers and clover in the back yard unmowed for bees and butterflies and other insects to use. If my dogs didn't like trying to eat bees I would consider doing some sort of beekeeping.

> My policy is ignore them

I can't ignore them indoors because they multiply quickly.

> unless my wife complains (she hates big bugs for some reason)

Some of us are absolutely terrified of bugs and spiders. Some of it is fueled by not knowing the true nature of them and some of it is instinctive. Also traumatic events in the childhood involving bugs play a big role too.

I have the same base thinking, but had to adjust a lot as reality quickly becomes complicated.

For instance running after moths at night isn’t fun, and they don’t bring much troubles so I gave up on the in/out separation for them.

Or spiders: people who don’t want insects in their house might want to let spiders and other predators live with them, as a helping factor.

And then bringing plants inside also bring other kind of life and a lot of tradeoffs depending on the species.

> people who don’t want insects in their house might want to let spiders and other predators live with them, as a helping factor.

The spiders I have locally tend to hoard the dead, empty shells of the pillbugs (mostly) or millipedes (in one interesting case) that I presume they once caught and ate. They make for "interesting" caches to find.

Ugly[0] as they are, centipedes are exceptional insect killers. It is worth considering letting the occasional common house centipede just go about its business. If you are seeing a lot of them though that's indicative of a really big problem.

[0] "Ugly" is used here as a stand-in for "fundamentally terrifying to many people"

I have had house centipedes everywhere I’ve lived. I prefer them to almost any bug. They are very useful for pest control. Similar diet to spiders as I understand it, and I find them much less “frightening”. My deal with them is they need to stay out of my bed. They have had no issue with that...However, my wife’s rule is they have to stay out of her sight. she generally falls asleep on the earlier side. Especially now that we have children. This keeps the centipedes safe and the pest numbers low.

I've also had centipedes everywhere I've lived, but find them absolutely terrifying. They just send my spine ringing. With that said, in my current house I try to let them be. For now, they mainly stick to the basement which is OK by me.

I got over my aversion to house centipedes by thinking of them as "the cat of the insect world." Of course there are limits to allowable bedroom proximity.

Insects don't care about your charity. For each one you interwct with there are hundreds more out of sight. The one you saved will die of old age in a few weeks.

There are probably quite many bugs "inside your walls" in the literal sense.

Fair if you ask me.. i practiced extreme meditation and sat with mosquitos one day .. it did wonders to how much i get stung now ..

They still take a bite or two on occasion.. it itches for less than an hour (worst was a week before did this ..) but not like before - its as if they let me be after i let them be.

There seems to be a strange relationship between prey and predator we still haven't understood that yet.

What makes centipedes harmful?

They grow big, move fast, bite and are too delicate to carry without hurting them.

I'm actually afraid of bugs, so trying not to hurt them and acting cool is very energy consuming for me.

They can get quite large, depending on where you are in the world. South America has ones that get 12 inches long and are venomous. I believe India also has some fairly large and venomous ones.

I don't know if any of the centipedes in the continental US are problematic like that or not.

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