Kapri

Neither my OH or I are afraid of spiders and will quite happily pick them up or live with them in the room etc. As a result, our kids are not particularly bothered by them either.
However, in the UK we know they are not aggressive or poisonous so there's no need to be worried.

I have just been reading up on the Sydney Funnel web spider which is both aggressive and poisonous and I'm wondering how to broach the subject with the kids. I don't want to frighten them but at the same time, they need to know that there are certain spiders that can't be touched and should probably be removed if they are in the house.
At the same time, if the spider is harmless I would like to leave it alone so it can eat flies, cockroaches etc

Do you recognise the different species of spider? Do you remove them if they are poisonous and if so, how?

chris955

It is an important subject, our kids have been bought up with animals, most of which are considered horrible (snakes and spiders). One of my sons has a tarantula as big as his hand which he handles but I digress, they realise that all spiders are not the same so unless they can identify it they dont mess with it. In Australia our kids would pick up small Huntsman and other obviously harmless species. They knew not to touch Wolf Spiders or White Tailed Spiders and a few others that would occassionally find their way into the house.
Generally we would remove spiders from the house as it was full of Geckos which took care of the insects. There is no doubt you have to be much more careful in Australia, itsbest to use a commonsense approach, if in doubt kick it out

roaringmouse

If in doubt, a big book or shoe normally does the job.. but leave the big huntsman to do their thing as they eat the nasties.

canadaeh

I scream like a girl and hide until someone gets home to remove it.

Maybe buy them a book on Australian Spiders, it will show all the types and how to identify them, won't scare them if they are generally not scarrd and would be more interesting. It will show the safe ones and interesting stranr ones as well as the dangerous ones to be avoided.

In general you don't see too many anyway.

Geordie George

My children are only 4 and 2, so they've just been told to leave spiders alone and tell a grown up when they encounter one. I do regularly get dragged off to inspect spider webs in the garden as a result. But it means they know to leave well alone, just in case, but aren't scared of them. DD found a redback at preschool yesterday and told the teacher who duly squished it. It works for us.

Japonica

My kids can recognize a redback, white tail etc. The older one can identify daddy long legs, orb weavers, wolf spiders and the like.

They know enough not to put their hands anywhere they can't see (ie. into containers, under outdoors toys not used in a while).

We do have the occasional small brown spiders in the house. I don't know what they are. Not white tails. I just call them house spiders for lack of a better term. I generally leave them alone. They tend to hide behind bookcases and dressers. That said, our son was bitten by something back in December. The doctor said it wasn't a "dangerous" spider and didn't require treatment. It also didn't bother him at all, just looked terrible. The whole huge red ring around the central bite.

All non-redbacks in the garden and garage are left alone. Redbacks get squished or spot sprayed. We don't spray the whole garden. We did that once at the rental house and found that when we killed off all the resident spiders, redbacks moved in and by the next summer, we had double the amount of redbacks. We've left them alone and most of our garden has those fat black ones, but they seem to deter the redbacks. Works for us.

pomikev

Me too, and I am ashamed

Family of 3

I thought Huntsmans were dangerous?

Japonica

Only to your heart.

chris955

No, generally speaking they are 'harmless'. They have a nasty bite and are venomous but very mild.

RedDragon2008

While training them on the art of using a vacum cleaner include spider removal.

NickyC

I wouldn't be too concerned about Funnel Webs, either.

I've lived in Sydney for 33 years. I've never seen one ever and no-one I know has ever seen one. And I can count the number of red backs I've seen on one hand.

Dangerous spiders really don't impact daily life too much. Just tell your kids to leave all spiders alone, not to put their hands in dark places and they will be fine.

Jon77

We had a red back living on the inside of our garage door, just left it alone, never caused any bother.

Funnel webs are out there and will wander in to homes, usually when there is rain around in summer the males wander around looking for mates. We had evidence of funnel web activity at our last rental (you can see the traps and tube like webs) and our neighbors a few doors down said they had seen a few.

The males are very aggressive an will chase / come at you with front raised legs showing off their fangs.

Basically if you see one of these bastards in your house get out and call the professionals!

lesleys

We just had our first encounter with red-backs after 8 years here. They kept appearing from the fan vent over the shower hanging on a thread in the middle of the shower. We had about 10 of them in a month - each was duly sprayed or squashed and flushed down the loo. It was getting a bit repetitive so we took the vent off and sprayed some 3 month spray up there, but they kept dropping in. Eventually my OH took the spray in the loft and sprayed from that side as well. A few legs hung in the vent for a few days, but no more live spiders.

Advice - have light coloured tiles, walls, floors so you can spot anything uninvited. We usually just remove spiders, millipedes, an odd scorpion or a lively skink using a transparent plastic box and a piece of cardboard. You get used to them. Ants are much more worrying.

Kapri

This thread was going quite well until I saw this post!



Thanks everyone.