Woodshop Pet Problems

[robinson46176]

I have not been able to do much in the woodshop this year but I hope to change that this month. Have had this funny thing the last couple of years, SPIDER INVASION!!! As I mow I see thousands of them. When we open one of the patio doors we see them waiting outside and dashing into the house. We use the sticky spider traps and at peak times a trap will fill up in a couple of weeks. That is with about 5 traps in just the living room. When going in the basement woodshop to get tools this month (Oct.) I have been seeing them dash across the floor for cover. All sizes from about a nickel up to about a 50 cent piece. My wife brought home a can of Raid Spider and Scorpion Killer and I started spraying by the outside entry door. I was not spraying real heavy, I just wanted get an idea of the population. When I started spraying around the door frame it looked like a waterfall of dying spiders falling to the floor. I think that light spraying around the shop killed about all of the gang. There are spider bodies all over the place. They don't look so big with their legs all drawn up. Tomorrow I intend to spend a bit of time sweeping them up. If I see any live ones I'll do another light spraying but I was really impressed. They are not my favorite kind of pet but had not really been that much of a problem. We have not been bitten at all and I have not had any crawling on me.


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[Majones1]

I hate spiders, they have always scared the crap out of me, but I do like what they do… they eat other bugs. But an infestation, that’s a Halloween story come true.

Still, I’d be wondering what they were eating. For an infestation to survive there needs to be a large number of insects for them to eat, so you might need to figure out what that is.

[robinson46176]

I did get most of the dead spiders swept up... And, I didn't really need a 5 gallon bucket to hold them.
This kind of flush of one or two species on a given year or two is pretty common on the farm. As you say they are after "something" to eat but also getting inside if possible to at least survive as long as possible. These spiders are hunters I guess but I have no idea what their main diet is outside or inside either for that matter. About all I see in the house is gnats and maybe a few small ants. I did notice that these do not build webs (thankfully, nothing makes a good mess like webs and sawdust.)
I recall a year many years ago when we had a massive invasion of those huge black and yellow garden spiders. I was mowing between the fences and the field crops (Mostly corn, soybeans and wheat) with my Farmall Cub with a belly mower and carrying a long stick like a medieval jouster to keep the webs from the crop to fence knocked down and the hood and front axle being constantly covered with hundreds of them (to keep them away from me). The next year their numbers were back to normal. (shrug)
I just realized that I have not seen large batches of lady bugs this year???
Remember those waves of bugs we all called "picnic bugs"? I've not seen them at all?
I have noticed that this year there are quite large toadstools all around the farm. The "umbrella" top on some of them is up to 8" across.

Now I need to clean out another building so I can remove a lot of crap from the woodshop that wandered in when I was not looking...

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[chapmanruss]

Maybe it is because of Covid and they had to quarantine that drove them inside this year.

Good luck with their removal and the hope that this doesn't occur again for many years to come.

[RFGuy]

I can't speak for your area of the country, but this year was definitely unusual here with regard to insect type activity. I don't know if it was the La Nina weather pattern or something else, but we basically had no rain last year in the Phoenix area. Other than a few spot storms of no significance, we had essentially a dry 1-1.5 years. Unusual, even for this desert locale. Even had some cacti and desert plants die from lack of rain and heat stress in my yard. You know it is bad when cacti that were thriving just up and die one year. Towards the end of this past summer we got a deluge thus ending our near term drought. For about 2 months straight it felt like Seattle here...with rain daily or every other day. We needed it since we have been in a severe drought in the Southwest for over 2 decades now. What it brought was A LOT of insect activity to us here. In addition to more spiders, we had a ton of moths and many other insects pop up out of nowhere with this rain. In fact, many lost healthy plants at the end of the summer due to so much moth and caterpillar activity...they just got overwhelmed. Even had toads show up out of nowhere for a couple of weeks; I was fishing them out of my pool constantly. I don't think they rained down from above, so not quite end days yet, but who knows. Definitely a weird past 1-2 years of weather and pests out here in my area. Have you had a lot more rain the last year to cause more vegetation -> which causes more insects of all types -> which causes more predator insects like spiders?

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