What's your opinion on spiders?

God, we Bunnies are sadists....

Most spiders are pretty harmless.
I sweep them onto a sheet of newspaper & deposit them onto a bush outside rather than have them breeding inside.

After making a reference to Wisconsin, ehBeth asked me if I was a Cheese Head...

Like so many here, I save spiders from the squooshing death but stopping executioners in their tracks with a loud "I'll take care of it."

I then allow the spider to cling to a piece of paper and deposit it outside.

they're great little buggers.

I confess, I wouls like to do that - but they make me a little phobic (except stuff like daddy longlegs and such) and I sorta have to kill them. But I hate myself for it - and Itry to do it really, really fast.

Ones that don't worry me I will take outside, or even encourage for their insectivore tendencies.

We have huge orb spiders which weave huge webs every night - then eat them - these are a nightmare for we poor phobics to run into, especially since they are so strong, they almost twang you back on your heels. I always feel as though I am covered in spiders afterwards.

I love to watch the little garden ones, though - and to see all their shiny eyes when you shine a torch along the grass at night.

I adore things like praying mantises and such, though!

IS that thing a cheese, Bill?

I did take a bite from a Brown Recluse Spider that left some important memories in my brain cells -- I can tell you that.

That is a major bite, lemme tell ya.

Ah, you are Australian... Yes, cheese hat is what the American Football team The Green Bay Packer's Fan's like to wear to the game.

I am off the scoop'm up and bring them outside camp. Or, in the new england winter, I put them in the basement. I even escort black widows outside instead of killing them.

Yes Cunning Coney, he is, forsooth, a cheese-head--a term applied in dirision by those who are not denizens of the State of Wisconsin, in which the aforesaid, lovely Green Bay is located. Wisconsin is reputed as The Dairy State, and as is usually with the rustic, the Proud Cheese Head takes for laurels that which others think to cast as pearls before their less fortunate, porcine fellows . . .

Wow, I really couldn't have said that better myself. :wink:

Once, when i was hobbling about, and going to therapy for a torn meniscus over the knee of my left leg, i got a boil mysteriously immeidately over the shin bone on my right leg. The boil swelled rapidly, and the tip turned putrescent and black within two days--and on the second evening, i saw and killed (i do make intelligent exceptions) a brown recluse who seemed to have decided that my bed linen were a comfortable hermitage. By the following evening i had the symptoms of a severe influenza, and knew that the Epson salt (magnesium sulfate) laving which i had been using on the boil would be ineffective. When i got to a doctor the following morning, my right leg below the knee had swollen to twice its normal size . . . a little respect for nature, if you will . . . i was flat on my back for the following two weeks . . .

Our Coney, there is a creature related to the Praying Mantis to be found in the deciduous (sp?) forests of North America, known as the Walking Stick, which has the chameleon ability to take on the color and pattern of the surface on which it has chosen to lie in wait . . . i once was walking past an old caravan parked in a woods, and painted a horribly, ugly shade of auqa (such as was popular in the 1950's), and laughed out loud to see a walking stick spread out on the surface of the caravan, and perfectly mimicing the horrible blue-green upon which it lay . . . They usually run from 3 to 6 inches in length, and the legs and the joints thereof appear in exactly the shape of a jointed twig from a sapling tree . . .

in agreement with Setanta, as usual; spiders are the carnivors of the crawly world.
Where they are healthy and prolific, the less desirable denizens of the cranies, and 'underneaths' (cockroaches, flies mosquitoes) are not.

And, not only spiders (eight legs - not insects{6}), but house centepides, and assassin bugs also fill the ranks of your Lillipution defenders!

And, if you look very closely, they are extremely beautiful, in their (very) own way.

Protect and cherish them!

It's the thing below that really freaks me out. Are these things new to north america?

that is the 'house centipede' i mentioned above;

and if you watch carefully when they run (pretty fast,eh) thay are AMAZING!

they are amazing, but I'd never seen one before the mid 90s.

I like the little spiders we have around here. I will assist one out of the house, usually on the end of a soft mop, if it's moved into the house. I like watching them when they're busy spinning. Interesting little creatures.

I don't think I'd be as relaxed around any size of venomous spider.

I leave all spiders in my house unless they are on my bedroom ceiling. Occasionally, I take out the one's under the bed too.

I once worked the Foreign Languages building at the University of Illinois, which sits to the south of Davenport Hall--home of the Departments of Agriculture and Agronomy. Someone had obtained an import license, and then imported giant, flying cockroaches (their wings were not just ornamental as is the case with the German cockroach in North America). The University of Illinois, in it's historical heart around "the quadrangle," is connected underground by a reticulation (the more expensive term for networking, you can get more on an invoice for reticulation) of steam tunnels. The Giant Flying Sumatran Cockroaches (damn, i feel a motion picture coming on) soon spread to every building in the heart of campus (great method there, guys). You may well imagine the response of female civil service staff when turning a corner and suddenly confronting a 4" long cockroach which stands 1/2" off the ground, and which reacts by flying at her. Lively times in the basements of Davenport Hall and the Foreign Language Building.

Interesting story Set... do you know that none of them got out? And by the way; did those guys have anything to do with the incredible quantity of gnats that have taken up residence in Wisconsin since I left? I live on saltwater now (almost no bugs), so I can't be sure I'm not remembering less gnats than there were, but it seems like they've multiplied like rabbits... Like 10,000 time more than I remember. Any idea where they came from?

Ps I'm not trying to provoke the bunny.