LESLIE: Ron in Kansas, you find The Money Pit on KFRM. And you’ve got brown recluse spiders in your house. Are you OK?
RON: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we’re OK. We haven’t gotten bit. I don’t think I’ve – I don’t think I’ve gotten bit yet, anyway. But …
LESLIE: I think you would know. (chuckles)
RON: We sure have them and they – they’re not so much in the house but they are in the garage area.
LESLIE: Yeah, they love any sort of areas where they can find nice, dark places to hide. If you’re storing cardboard boxes or even golf clubs; anything that has a nice nook for them to get into – especially in your part of the country – you’re going to find them.
RON: Is there a way to get rid of them?
TOM: Ron, you know, something that’s interesting about the brown recluse spider is that these things can live for months without food. So, eliminating food or water is not something that will actually control them. The best way to control them is to remove their habitat. And in a house, you know, that can be loose boards, old furniture, other junk, storage, boxes, things of this nature. And …
LESLIE: Clutter.
TOM: Clutter. And also, whenever you find the web of a recluse spider, which has – it doesn’t have the normal sort of symmetrical web shape. It’s more like a tacky cloth sort of looking stuff. If you see the web start to form them, you want to vacuum them up. But removing the clutter and the environment that gives them a place to hide and to survive is what most of the experts – the entomologists – recommend as a solution for this.
Now, you can also have an exterminator spray a pesticide that will keep them under control if you have a real severe infestation. But kind of staying on top of the clutter and removing the webs is the most important way to control them.
LESLIE: Also Ron, since yours seem to be limited to the garage, to the outdoor area, if you install yellow light bulbs in your outdoor fixtures which are attracting insects to the area where you’re finding the brown recluse, if you can reduce the amount of food, maybe they’ll start going elsewhere to try to find places to eat. So it’s really about get in their environment and stopping their food source.
TOM: And lastly, Ron, you could also trap them using sticky traps. They’re effective at capturing brown recluse. But be careful. These are poisonous spiders and they can have nasty, nasty bites; they can cause nasty, nasty bites. So you want to be careful about handling them. If they get on a sticky trap, make sure they’re dead because the other thing you should know is that they’re very, very fast (chuckling) and if they’re not stuck, they can easily jump over and bite you.
Ron, I hope that helps you out. Thank you so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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