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There is a large giant spider in my apartment. I don't want to kill it because I need something to get rid of the flies, but if it's poisonous I might have to smash it.
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If you need something to get rid of flies get fly paper. And put the spider outside. Get it in a cup and toss it.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Find out if it's poisonous, and if it's not, live with it. It probably won't crawl on you much.
Posts: 930 | Registered: Dec 2006
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"Find out if it's poisonous, and if it's not, live with it. It probably won't crawl on you much."
Yeah, I mean, it probably won't crawl out at night and dance on your forehead and sing "hello my baby". Probably. Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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You just put a disposable cup over it, then slide a piece of paper under, then just toss the whole thing outside. It can't touch you.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Just last night when I was about to fall asleep, I felt the most terrifying thing land on my ear. Tiny legs. I spasmed immediately--and I'm pretty sure it was a house centipede because I've been seeing them lately. That was pretty terrifying. http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/files/images/website.preview.jpgPosts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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ugh... centipede's creep me out. We used to call them "hunter killers" in my house or "silverfish".
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I've never heard of such a thing. Silverfish creep me out but in a totally different way from centipedes.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: Just last night when I was about to fall asleep, I felt the most terrifying thing land on my ear. Tiny legs. I spasmed immediately--and I'm pretty sure it was a house centipede because I've been seeing them lately. That was pretty terrifying. http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/files/images/website.preview.jpg
Omigod! A wug! They're called house centipedes? We call them wugs (for wicked ugly bugs). They are fast! And disgusting. "We hates them!"
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Oh, turns out what I had living in my room was centipedes afterall. I would catch them and toss them out the window into the snow, instead of kill them quickly. Hypocrite .
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Centipedes are rather icky, but I do not like to kill them. They just have too many legs There's no reason to have that many legs. My grandmother used to freak when she saw them. She called them Thousand Legs.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Centipedes are rather icky, but I do not like to kill them. They just have too many legs There's no reason to have that many legs. My grandmother used to freak when she saw them. She called them Thousand Legs.
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I came across a <a href="http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/images/gigantea.jpg">Giant House Spider</a> the other day. He was just sitting on the middle of the stairs. I visibly freaked out when I realized what it was.
By the way, notice the ruler in my linked picture? Yeah, mine was about that big too.
I put him in an empty salsa jar. I bet he was spicy when I threw him out.
quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: Gah, reading this thread and clicking these pictures was a LARGE HUGE mistake.
I've never seen a house centipede, but they will haunt my dreams forever.
Now imagine, this being airlifted in by this and you've got the makings of a pretty good nightmare I would say.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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See, I don't really mind House Centipedes, because for the most part they stay out of sight. Plus, they eat the other thing that lives in my basement, the creature that looks like an unholy mutant hybrid of Cricket and Spider, the creature that's so fast you can't possibly kill it, the creature that knows it's so freaky its natural defense is to jump at you.
I'm talking, of course, about the Spider Cricket, also known as the Cave Cricket.
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His Savageness, how BIG are the centipedes that live in your house??? The house centipedes I used to have in a townhouse where I lived were pretty darned freaky but they didn't look big enough to eat a spider cricket. They were pretty much all legs, the bodies were small.
Luckily, the spider crickets seemed to stay outdoors. They liked to collect on our front porch when the porch light was on. One night my roommate (pre-cell phone days) called me from a pay phone across the street. She wanted me to turn off the front porch light so that she wouldn't be attacked by the spider crickets (which we just called "hoppy bugs") on her way in.
I must say, I like WUGS for the centipedes. One ran across my foot one time when we were trying to catch it, and it freaked me out pretty bad. Yes, fast and disgusting.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:His Savageness, how BIG are the centipedes that live in your house??? The house centipedes I used to have in a townhouse where I lived were pretty darned freaky but they didn't look big enough to eat a spider cricket. They were pretty much all legs, the bodies were small.
I think they're about two inches long. I've never actually seen a centipede feasting on a spider cricket carcass (that image, I think, would be enough to drive one mad), but I've read on the internet that centipedes are the natural predator to the spider cricket, and since I've seen a couple of centipedes in our basement I've hardly seen any spider crickets. I've assumed the centipedes were doing the dirty deed. Maybe they're taking credit for something else's work?
Originally posted by ersomniac:
quote: AGH agh agh aghaghahglsdk
[Nods emphatically/] And yet they're so much worse in real life... Posts: 194 | Registered: Feb 2005
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H.S., after I posted I thought, "well, duh, maybe the centipedes are why you never saw spider crickets in the house!"
ETA: oh, and speaking of images to drive one mad: I have never forgotten the image of a praying mantis hanging on to the leg of a tiny toad that was frantically leaping and hopping with the other legs, trying to escape. I didn't stick around to witness its fate.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I was doing a bit of house-cleaning a few days ago. My daughter brought home a box of rubber animal toys- snakes, spiders, beetles, and the like- so when I saw a big spider on the bed, I grabbed it along with the things I was clearing.
GYAHHHH!
Five minutes later, when I'd somewhat recovered from the heebie-jeebies, I found a cup and put it outside.
I'm not normally a big arachnaphobe, but the sudden realization that I'd just picked up a big living spider was a bit much.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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HS, my boyfriend introduced my to the lovely Cave Cricket, or as he calls them "Sprickets" during a discussion of which was worse, NYC Waterbugs or NJ Sprickets. He was kind enough to bag one and catch it for me so I could see it up close. Funny thing is, I refused to catch one for him b/c I am, well let's just say, not fond of them. But as luck would have it one did happen to sneak its way into his Christmas present. Posts: 66 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I get cave crickets in my bathroom sometimes; I think they're coming in through the dryer vent. Mostly I see them in the fall, but I saw a freaking humongous one in there last night, had to have been two inches across. *shudders* I don't usually mind them that much; if I have shoes on I stomp them and if I'm barefoot I point them out to the cats. The cats like to pull their legs off and watch them wiggle around till they die Posts: 957 | Registered: Aug 2002
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AutumnWind, for the record, I hate cockroaches (is that the plural?) worse than perhaps any other creature on the face of the planet. I would take a basement full of Sprickets over a moderate amount of roaches in my upper levels any day. However, I've luckily only ever seen a few small roaches in our house. When I do see one, I replace the roach motels I have scattered all over, and then I don't see any for another six months.
So a roach snuck its way into his present? What was the present and what was the reaction. *Shudder*
Posts: 194 | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote: The cats like to pull their legs off and watch them wiggle around till they die
That's the most heartwarming thing I've ever heard. If I ever see a bunch of them in the basement again, I'm going to get a cat.
Posts: 194 | Registered: Feb 2005
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For about a week I have had two nickle sized garden spiders that living in my bathtub, they live out itsy bitsy spider everytime I take a shower.
Posts: 686 | Registered: Sep 2001
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HS, it's actually quite funny (and I'm happy to have a partner in crime in my loathing of these things). I can even tolerate roaches, but roaches on steroids..NO! When I was living at home in Queens whenever it would rain there was always a good chance of there being a waterbug in either my brother's room or the attic. I had stored my bf's gift in my brother's room for a good month or so. It was a beautiful blue robe from Macy's. It was our first Christmas together and we had been dating for around 4 months (so it was also that...what do I get them stage). Anywhoo, we're exchanging gifts and as soon as he opens it I see the carcass of a large waterbug in the box...I screamed and jumped up and went to the furthest part of the room away from the offending box. I couldn't stop apologizing b/c to me the robe was now dirty. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Then he comes towards me with the box trying to get to the stairs to get rid of it. I then yell at him not to come closer, run to the opposite side of the room and let him continue downstairs... Needless to say I think two things happened that night. 1 - NYC Waterbugs won the contest 2 - We have a story to pass on to our future children Posts: 66 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:The cats like to pull their legs off and watch them wiggle around till they die
That's the most heartwarming thing I've ever heard. If I ever see a bunch of them in the basement again, I'm going to get a cat.
Cats are great for keeping the cricket population under control. We often find discarded cricket legs around the house since our cats like to eat the bodies and leave the legs behind. Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Large spiders are what vacuum cleaners were invented for. If it's too large to be sucked up by a vacuum cleaner... well, then you have a problem.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Suck it up in the vacuum - in one of those bagless ones. Then, you can watch it go round. Then, set the vacuum out along the street and let someone steal it and try to empty the container and let the killer spider jump on them with both its forearms flailing and scratching at the hapless victim's eyes and frothing at the mouth and screaming (both the victim and the spider) and be sure to get the next day's paper to read the headline "Man killed by Vacuum", which the AP will pick up and publish across the world making men across the world afraid to use vacuums.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Apr 2007
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Seriously though, if it's too big for a vacuum your only chance is to make some kind of alliance with it. Offer to provide it with sacrifices in exchange for it staying out of sight. Once you've gained its trust, try killing it by pumping one of the sacrifices full of poison.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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[sings] Don't try to take that centipede's life 'Cause you'll cut him in half and he'll still survive, And go home to his wife in pairs . . . And they'll have problems. [/sings]
Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005
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If you have a Shop-Vac, no spider is too big.
I think I have seen a spider cricket before. I keep in mind that it has six legs, not eight, and therefore is not evil.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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