I made this mistake with a stink bug when it was winter. It was ok with being on the piece of paper I had it on. When I opened the door and the cold air hit it, it backed away towards me. I set it down and it stopped moving. Oops. :(
They’re cave-dwelling spiders. They still need a way to find new caves to inhabit. If they’re already settled in your house then they may not survive because you’ve interrupted their lifecycle. But new spiders are wandering in all the time. Those ones may have better luck finding a new house to move into (or coming right back into your house) because they haven’t been established yet.
Even though I still have arachnophobia, I've intentionally lived with spiders for over a decade and I've not had issues with mosquitoes even if I left all of my windows open. And my roommates are thriving!
They're very chill roommates, too! After about 1-2 months of adjusting to living together in my old apartment, they stopped spinning webs in the areas which I used frequently and focused on the zones which I left out for them - ceiling corners, gaps between walls and furniture, etc. I did occasionally clean up their old webs every now and again (while taking great care not to bother the spiders themselves) because they also gathered a lot of dust. But they'd replace the old webbing in a matter of days.
And they never developed overpopulation issues, even though I did see them producing egg sacks regularly. I was expecting to drown in spiders by the end of the first year of trying this arrangement, but I never counted more than 15-20 spiders apartment-wide.
Yeah I've always had similar arrangements with spiders. I don't bother them if they don't bother me. Wolf spiders chilling in my bathtub do get expropriated through the nearest window though.
Oh, wow! I'd probably just die if I ever saw a wolf spider in my tub! Like, complete simultaneous organ failure, the energy which is me would just eject from my body.
Lucky for me, I live in Temperate-Continental, so my biggest threat is seeing a Long-Legs dangling down to check up on me while I'm showering!
And I'm serious about this. Maybe it was just me imagining things, but I swear they started inspecting me every now and again. Like, I'd be at my desk playing, and I'd see one rapelling from the ceiling, like 20-30 cm away from me. Seldom has any descended onto the actual desk, though, they'd just hang for a bit, then climb back up. It was strangely comforting, though, it makes them feel a lot more alive and present than the mind would tend to think about an eight-legged thing right out of my nightmares. They really have become my roommates.
I have so many spiders on the lower floor of the place I'm in now I've given up on even bringing them outside. I identify what they are to keep track if we have an uptick in dangerous ones. If it is a particularly gross one it goes in the garage to war it out with the cellar spiders otherwise I just shoo them under furniture so I don't have to think about it. Damnit I'm turning into my dad...
My rule has always been simple. It I'm in its house (outside), it's not my business. If it's in my house, I have to make a choice. That choice was always smash (I'm arachnophobic), but my daughter has led me down the paragon path and I now save more than half of all spiders inside of my house. Maybe more. I don't get that many spiders in my house here in arid western Canada.
Tried and true! I also add a jar because they make me jump, I can't help it lol. I have had big orb spiders crawl on me in the woods while climbing in the US and we have large spiders here incl. the giant English house spider here. They are both the size of hands. Freak me the fuck out haha.
I saw a couple recluse spiders in my apartment several months ago and maybe I’m an idiot, but I left them alone. They were truly more scared of me than I was of them. They don’t want to bother me and only will if I threaten them. So I left them alone and they just chilled in their “recluse” hiding spots.
I have a door spider. It lives in a crack in my entry door. I'm not sure of it is the same spider as last year, but it makes trap web near my door frame. I think of it as bug protection, it's eating something I don't want in my house.
One thing to notice
Most animals that are inside your house, are inside your house for a reason. And if you put them outside to "live" they will just die if they cannot return to a suitable environment with a reliable source of food and proper cover from the weather and predators.
So, sorry for taking away the guilt free feeling of putting an animal outside thinking it will live a long happy life in the wilderness.
I often think about this too, though a quick search about house spiders did suggest to me they have a decent chance of survival through winter. I don’t think human structures have been around long enough for species to have adapted to be dependent on them.
to continue the story: so, he was released in the wilderness and the other 2 spiders saw him all clean and posh that decided to beat him up and mug him.
perhaps if they wanted to live inside my house they should have considered not going out of their way to make my instincts scream for death?
Do what orb weavers do: set up a web and stay there, and if you have to move do so slowly.
Respect me and i'll respect you, run at me with your too many legs and i will send you back to god for adjustments.
Unless the spider in question is a likely danger/hazard, leaving them be is generally my policy. They don't usually bother me. That said, the time a calisoga spider got in the house, it caused a visceral fear reaction. I didn't kill it though, just got safety glasses and trapped it before releasing it outside (I didn't know that it was not a tarantula at the time).
To be fair, the spider will likely be responsible for the deaths of many other insects, but honestly, I'm ok with that. They can live in my house rent free if they keep the other bugs from making my home their home.... And they don't crawl on me. That's just begging to be killed....
My partner has turned me into a spood fan. I oscillated between being scared of them and liking them in my childhood, but after meeting him, I think of them as weird little guys that hang around the house