This will ease your Spider Worries GOGers! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF9fcIqX9XQ

MEOW

Introduce a natural predator or a poison. Or both.

OMG you fools! We're heading to Lake Constance next week for camping and there will be lots of spiders, as always. I never had big problems with it but NOW I'M FREAKING SCARED! :P
Damn you and your pics and videos! ;)

At least one can be sure not to get THAT big ones here in germany... i really don't understand how mankind is actually able to survive in Australia. The first spider i'd meet that'd be bigger than my hand and i would burn down my house and leave the continent! ;D

I had a similar experience with tactical spiders - except I wasn't expecting any scare ... and I was driving at the time:
It was hidden in the sun-visor, which was up as it wasn't very sunny - along the road I went when suddenly it descended on a thread, stopped right in front of my eyes (maybe 5cm away, filling my vision, looking for all the world like a giant spider and it spread it's legs out in all directions as if to say "I'm batman" (except it was more "I'm the spider of doom") - I nearly swerved off the road but managed to control it enough to come to a stop and smack the thing out of the car window.

August/September is the spider breeding season here in the UK, which can be a pain when you're wife is scared to death of them. The big males come out of hiding to go looking for females and get it on, so I usually spend those months hunting a couple of them a day.

Last year, though, I came across a pretty good tip online that reduces the problem of house spiders. Just buy some pure peppermint oil and one of those travel bottles for misting water, then add 30 drops of the oil to some warm water and shake. Spray the mix along your door frames and any open windows every 4 or 5 days and you'll notice a difference to the amount of spiders running about the house. The spiders retreat from the peppermint oil quite dramatically, and it'll even kill some of them. I was sceptical at first, but it seems to work.

Your stories sound like everywhere in the world but Poland there are some GIANT spiders hunting people :P

Thanks for the stories and for the photos. Now, I'm seeing big spiders all over my flat, even if it's just crack on the paint.

I dare you guys to watch Arachnophobia now. :D

Go watch the Monster Quest episode about giant spiders in the Amazon.

Oh, the scorpions in your shoes are quite real. Anywhere in the desert southwest of the US, you shake out your shoes in the morning, just in case something decided to nest in there during the night.

We also have tarantulas, but they are placid and can be kept as pets. (The Goliath spider that sometimes eats birds is in South America.)

We've got a couple of types of spider around here that inhabit homes. We've got house spiders and we've got giant house spiders. The things get freaking huge. I've seen more than a few over the years that could touch all edges of my hand with their legs.

The thing about them being swallowed that freaks a lot of people out isn't likely. An average person isn't likely to swallow them as spiders tend to stay away from warm moist breathe because they don't want to be eaten.

Don't click the links if you're arachnophobic. Personally, I don't mind spiders outside, but house spiders freak me out big time. I'm not sure why. Probably because they're a lot larger than any of the species of spider that we've got in this region. But, they're largely harmless even if they do on rare occasions grow large enough to fill out a dinner plate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy_long-legs_spider
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_house_spider

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. I'm not scared of monters, spiders, scorpions in movies, but even just thinking about myself living near a desert, having to shake my shoes everytime I want to put them on...

Or dealing with Black Widow spider on every day basis, brrrr.....

I just have enough sometimes living where I live and finding maggots in your rice box... :P

Not sure what kind it was but it was a large house spider, black..about the size of the palm of my hand when you include leg spread.

I think what makes spiders so scary for one is social..because everyone else is especially parents/moms. But also it is from seeing how they eat. They capture in a web, wrap the poor fellers up as they are struggling..and then suck the juices out. Theres always a few stories every year of someone dying from spiders after they creep into the sheets or in shoes. And hell they look like monsters. I'm sure if there were a giant praying mantis in my sheets at night staring me in the face, id also freak the hell out. I go into hunt mode and sleep doesn't happen til me or him dies. My rooster stopped crowing when he had the feast this morning..he ran off the hens to get to the tasty arachnid :D

Holy crap. Now that really is a kill it with fire situation if ever I saw one.

You can get plug in devices that emit vibrations/frequencies down your electrical circuits which put off spiders. I have one in my flat which I bought primarily for mice and rats as I live out in the country.... not had a single mouse since. As for the spiders they're definitely a lot rarer now, I only see the odd 1 or 2 indoors (tonnes outside) and most of those are Huntsmen which aren't true spiders anyhow. If they bother you that much it's something that might be worth looking into.