What is your spider infiltration rate?

[celedhring]

I haven't seen a single spider since I moved to my new apartment in February.

[Zanza]

No spiders in my apartment. I sometimes get a fly or a mosquito when I leave the windows open in the evening.

[mongers]

I see plenty, but not really an issue here.

Helps having the windows open overnight in summer and living in the countryside, 

[Caliga]

In the South, you just can't keep a house entirely insect and arachnid free, especially if you have a wooded estate like me.

This year the insects have been very light, due I think to the extreme cold we had this winter.  We do have spiders, but far less than usual.  Typically they are wolf spiders, which are harmless.  A couple of months ago one crawled up my leg when I was sitting at my desk.  I killed the little guy for that transgression but I normally leave these spiders alone since I figure they eat other insects.

We also have had corn spiders in the past but I haven't seen one of those in years.  They like to spin webs along the outside of the house and in window boxes.  They're really neat looking:

[sbr]

[Malthus]

If I saw one of those, my heart would explode.

We get dock spiders in northern Ontario and Quebec that can be nearly that size. I once woke up with one hanging upside down on the inside of my mosquito net over my bed, directly over my face. Getting out of bed without shaking the net was fun. 

Thing about dock spiders is that, unlike tarantulas, they aren't slow creepers - they can run at dazzling speed. Sometimes, they startle you if you are in bare feet on a dock by popping out of a crack in the planks, running across your foot, and disappearing into another crack before you can even react.

As far as I know they are pretty harmless - just big and startling. They are, in fact, big enough to catch and eat small fish (hence they are also known as "fishing spiders")

Some pics here:

http://arthropodecology.com/2012/08/13/canadas-largest-spider-sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay/

[DontSayBanana]

No spiders thanks to four highly active cats. Few insects, too, for the same reason.

[viper37]

Or, more accurately, how often do you see spiders in your house, of an offensive size and manner?

Because I have seen four in the past week, three skulking about the upper corners of my habitation box, one in a chair that dodged my attempts to kill it, and it pleases me not at all.

I tend to keep them around, in corners where they ain't too visible, so they take care of nasty bugs for me.

[MadImmortalMan]

When I first moved in to my house, my brother and I found a spider in the garage of Australian proportions. It was brown and very big, about the size of a saucer. It was really fast and could roll itself up into a ball and move like that. It was killed with religious zeal, but I later found out it was a wind scorpion and the college would have paid me a lot of money for it if I'd trapped it intact. They didn't want it in pulp form.

[Iormlund]

Maybe once a decade.

[The Brain]

I don't live in the jungle.

[Ideologue]

Maybe once a decade.

The spider-slayer robots have a pretty enormous success rate, I take it?

[garbon]

If I saw one of those, my heart would explode.

We get dock spiders in northern Ontario and Quebec that can be nearly that size. I once woke up with one hanging upside down on the inside of my mosquito net over my bed, directly over my face. Getting out of bed without shaking the net was fun. 

Thing about dock spiders is that, unlike tarantulas, they aren't slow creepers - they can run at dazzling speed. Sometimes, they startle you if you are in bare feet on a dock by popping out of a crack in the planks, running across your foot, and disappearing into another crack before you can even react.

As far as I know they are pretty harmless - just big and startling. They are, in fact, big enough to catch and eat small fish (hence they are also known as "fishing spiders")

Some pics here:

http://arthropodecology.com/2012/08/13/canadas-largest-spider-sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay/

By definition spiders aren't harmless.

[Caliga]

 

[Grey Fox]

Everyday. Mostly daddy long legs, either in my bathroom or in my basement.

I think there's one in the corner right now.