Hacker News Reader

I take the opposite approach - any spider I see inside, even Black Widows, I carry outside in a cup. At least they then have a chance. And Widows will do their level best to nest somewhere far out-of-site and never bother you. I also encourage my neighbors to not sterilize around their houses with industrial bug spray because spiders and bugs are 99,999/100,000, nothing but beneficial.

View on HN

Same. It can get tiresome in CA though! I'll take widows over recluses any day.

On the one occasion where I found an infestation too extensive to relocate (under almost every one of my outdoor chairs), I tried bug spray. Horrible. Thanks to CA's hysterical bans on everything, the spray is ineffective and merely tortures the spiders and often leaves them alive but maimed. I felt terrible. Never again.

Why resort to bug spray when citrus and other scents will repel them naturally?

It was too late to repel them. The chairs were rife with brown-widow nests.

Anyway, now I just blast these areas with a hose from time to time. Individual spiders I will relocate if they're in an area where people are likely to sit.

There's a tiny baby spider roosting in my oven hood right now. The two last evenings he has descended on a web to look around. I considered putting him outside, but it's too cold so I just let him return to his hiding place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com