system11 wrote:4) THEY EAT HOUSE SPIDERS - which are big, ugly, fast, agile and frankly terrifying.
This unsettles me a bit. I grew up in the caribbean, where our common house spider still creeps me the hell out. Totally harmless but they hide anywhere imaginable and are often about a hand's span in size. Having moved to northern England the only spiders I've seen in my house over a decade or so could fit on a thumbnail. Maybe I shouldn't feel so complacent, as I do plan on moving elsewhere in the country when the time is right. Ugh. I'd rather deal with smaller poisonous spiders than the gangly skittering things we get back home.
They're among the fastest spiders in the world. We once caught one of the giant ones over 5 inches in diameter at my parents house. Avoid the south. If you see cellar spiders around, leave them alone and kill anything else - they will take over after a while and be the only thing you ever see.
Gahh, that looks all too familiar. Interesting, I'd honestly thought you just don't get spiders like that here - a few times I've had one of our smaller ones scramble up the curtain near my desk, but they're so tiny it's hard to care much. I'd probably jump out of my chair if it'd been one like the above, as was a pretty common occurence back home...
