Yeah same, we do not bother spiders in the house unless they jump into bed or on food or whatever, and then we just take them outside. With spiders and cats in the house we never see any flies or other insects.
I have a rule with the spiders where if they get too bold they get the vacuum. I don't mind them lurking in the corners but I don't want them crawling across my desk. I think most of them understand the arrangement by now. Only occasional enforcement is necessary.
I tried this with a yellowjacket and a screamer of a Shop Vac that has a six-foot hose. I was sure it would have suffocated from the dust inside the vacuum bag clogging its spiracles.
Next morning, the wasp (now with tattered wings) was sitting in the corner of a window. I have no idea how it made it out.
It's probably a pretty natural path for the wasp assuming it survived the initial time you were running the vac. The shopvac is just a big container with at the top an exit path following the wall naturally out the tube. They don't even tend to have a flap like smaller hand vacs might have to keep dust from falling out during use.
I feel guilty when I take down the webs. Wool dusters work as well as the vac.
Lately I have been trying to get macro photos of spiders hanging on their threads and so far failing because they see the camera and drop down a foot before I can set up the shot.
Incidentally, this method cured me of arachnophobia. Having it trapped inside the glass, yet in my hand and up close to take a closer look, allowed me to gradually see them as not all that scary. It's like that therapy where you gradually get closer to the thing you're afraid of (desensitization?).
I deal with trespassing flies this way. They spend some time in fly jail (butterfly net, twisted closed and propped against the door frame through which they entered) pour encourager les autres, then they go free outside at dusk.
Pheromones, interpretive dance, telepathy,—I don’t know exactly how the others get the message but I know that they do, and they stay on the correct side of the doorway.
I've never really understood the "spiders protect you from pests" argument. Yeah, sure they eat flies. But I'd much rather have a fly buzz past me and get stuck to some fly paper than have a spider drop from the door frame on an invisible silk thread and slam into my face, or run across my pillow. Maybe I have arachnophobia, but they're freaky little creatures that I don't want in my living space.
> than have a spider drop from the door frame on an invisible silk thread and slam into my face, or run across my pillow
Rare if ever happens. Maybe 5 times in your life time. I will pay that cost any day. I have made friends with spiders. Flies spread diseases, spiders eat them. Spiders seldom bite humans and when they do, it’s nowhere near as bad as getting scratched by a cat.
For what it's worth, it happens to me about 5 times each summer. But I also welcome spiders as pest control, so it's not a surprise, and I forget all about it 5 seconds later.
Suit yourself, I'd much rather have the latter. One of the best features of spiders is that they can't fly. If a bug can fly, all bets are off. Who knows where that thing is going to end up. Spiders are at least more predictable.
I've never been prevented from sleep by a spider buzzing around the room, either.
I saw a butterfly get stuck to a web once. It immediately started hurling itself violently away, trying to shake itself free. The spider was not immediately in evidence.
I managed to take the web off it, but not without tearing off the part of the wing that made contact. I assume that in the butterfly's best-case scenario, that would have happened anyway. It was able to fly afterwards.
I don't mind spiders at all, they mostly stay out of my way. Flies, on the other hand, land on my food, buzz around the room when I want to sleep, and are generally a nuisance.
That's how I feel about dragonflies. Spiders are, to me, equally interesting but less enjoyable. I tolerate a few spiders in our house, but not in bedrooms or the kitchen.
The best way to get rid of spiders it to get rid of the files yourself then.
If there is nothing in your house for the spiders to eat, you won't have spiders. If you remove the spiders but not their prey (flies, etc...), you will have more flies, and spiders will keep coming back.
The reason the spider web in the article is so huge is that there is a huge amount of flies to feed the spiders.
It's actually spider webs that protect you from pests. The webs keep catching bugs as long as they are there, the spider just eats what it wants then moves on.
My house has a problem with little black ants that pest control services never could quite take care of. Spiders kept trying to set up shop near a window, but I would always knock the web down. Once I relented and let the spiders do their thing my ant problem went away. All I need to do is clean up a few ant corpses in the fall, which is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.