Are you arachnophobic?

[Twigler]

Nope, but I'd remove them from the house. Anything that's not invited gets either killed or removed. I like spiders well enough to just remove them. Wasps and anything else big that flies however get a quick whack with a badminton racket. I rather clean up the mess than run after the damn bastiches for hours, trying to get them to find the open window (which they instinctively seem to avoid like the plague).

Then again there's nothing really big here, but I suspect I might scream like a little girl when something the size of a tarantula were to surprise me by dropping on my shoulder...

[Rye]

Spiders disgust me and make me flinch if they do that whole "pause, suddenly move really quickly with no prior warning" routine. I try not to hurt them, though, they kill flies, which I HATE with a passion for being the most annoying thing along with midges and mosquitoes.

[Akhlut]

Still, it's a Wolf Spider. As long as you don't bother it, it won't bother you. If it was inside, I'd use a broom to shoo it outside where it could go back to hunting.

Are you kidding? You leave that one inside to eat any potentional pests! For instance, my landlord cleaned out the apartment underneath ours and that launched all the roaches there into our apartment, and I'd kill for a wolf spider or three to help eliminate that problem.

[GuppyShark]

I really don't like them, they scare me in a way most bugs don't. I don't want them in my bedroom but if I see them elsewhere in the house I usually don't bother getting rid of them. There's barrier spray around the doorways so I don't see them very often.

[Akhlut]

Anyway, as my reply above shows, I quite like spiders.

On the other hand, certain insects, well, they don't instill fear in me so much as a deep sense of loathing and a dire need to KILL. These mainly fall into the pest category: roaches, firebrats/silverfish, earwigs, and other such insects. Eusocial insects (ants, wasps, etc.), beetles, and lepidopterans that keep outside (moths that get inside die) I'm fine with and actually like.

Hell, if the ants keep away from my pantry, I'm perfectly fine with them because they happily slaughter any other pest insects.

[loomer]

I like spiders. I have like a million in my house, eating flies and such. A few huntsmen spiders, too - they're good for keeping down the roaches. They're interesting, and their webs are beautiful.

However, they do provoke disquiet in me. The way they move. The ungodly speed of those chitinous legs. Of course, I have slightly more reason than a lot of other people to have a fear of spiders - I live in prime Redback (they fucking hurt.) territory and also prime funnelweb territory. I think it's mostly the funnelweb.

Imagine it. This horrible thing the size of your hand that can run a metre in a second despite its small size, that can jump like three feet in the air, and that is actively aggressive towards humans and extremely venomous.

[PREDATOR490]

If I dont see them and they stay out of my way, I dont mind.
Actively get in my way or become an obvious eye-sore then its a one way trip to removal via forced exit or death.

It's not that I really fear them more than they have a tendancy to be appear at inconvienient times.
I.E Having a spider with some serious gall deciding to hide behind my keyboard and startle the fuck out of my when it dashed across the desk.

Alternatively, having stupid spiders hovering above me. Especially in the bedroom, I have no desire to have a spider fall onto me which actually happened to me in primary school. Sizeable fucker decided to literally scare the shit out of me by crawling along my neck after it landed on me somehow. I thought I was having an itch, the next thing I know my fingers touch something that moves... the spider got a first class flight when I hurled it across the classroom.

After that, I refuse to have these things floating above me and no where I intend to sleep. That stupid factoid people like to bring out about the average human eating x spiders in the sleep automatically springs to mind and makes removal of the things mandatory.

[Vendetta]

This spider is sad because you all hate it.

[Samuel]

This spider is sad because you all hate it.

That... is hilariously cute.

[LadyTevar]

This spider is sad because you all hate it.

That... is hilariously cute.

I have to agree. It's like a fuzzy multi-eyed teddybear.

[Covenant]

I'm not, but they do cause me to react very negatively to them indoors. I hate the mess they leave (lots of cobweb spiders around here) and there's no place for them to 'go' that's not risking a "walk face-first into them" encounter, which happens. Outside they're fine, I had some frustrating encounters with what I think is a Northern Black Widow yesterday that'd set up a colony on my bike (which had gone unused for recent days due to the rain and humidity) and I needed to knock off a big ol' black spider and tons of these other lankier ones, as well as their eggs. It was a big mess.

But since it was outdoors it didn't bother me. I find spiders quite interesting, but I also find army ants interesting--I just don't want them in my living area.

[Coyote]

I recoil in defensive fear when I find a spider nearby. One of the most undignified ways to go is spider bite. And probably painful, too. Swatters, hairspray flamethrowers, you name it, all go into anti-spider defense in the house.

I do, however, grudgingly allow spiders to operate outside to keep the bugs away.

Although in an ideal world, there would be no creepy-crawlies at all. (I know, I know, they're necessary for important ecological stuff, etc, but... we're talking my ideal world).

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Scared of spiders? Nah. Most of them, I go with "Live and let live." Even the obnoxiously venomous ones, like black widows. Unless the obnoxiously venomous sort turn up inside, in which case, they're dispatched back outside before one of my cats tries to do something dumb, like eat it.

Jumping spiders, however, I feel the compulsion to toy with, like little tiny cats. Not the petting so much, but the convincing them to chase things like mouse cursors around.

[Hamstray]

That particular arachnid in the picture doesn't concern me, however I don't want to have the smaller ones crawl on me. I especially hate ixodoidea, so I guess I'm halfway arachnophobic.

P.S.: oh and how could I forget scorpions, luckily they live nowhere near my location.

[Lagmonster]

I'm not afraid of them, but I'm not going to snuggle one, either. At best, we coexist so long as they understand that I can kill them at a whim.

[Modax]

I used to be quite arachnophobic as a kid, but I've mostly grown out of it. I don't know why, they just don't scare and/or disgust me the way they used to.

[Night_stalker]

Depends on the spider. If it's a Black Widow, which is rare up in nice COLD NH, then the Widow gets to die. If it isn't then it gets to live, unless the cat gets to it first. Then it might have a problem.

[Kuroji]

I've never been particularly afraid of spiders, though there are certain spiders (usually, the big ones) that I would cheerfully give plenty of room. There was one I saw while on vacation in North Carolina that had taken up residence on someone's porch, spinning a web that blocked off one end of the porch, but quite frankly it just looked really cool and the spider was easily as big as my hand.

However, I've found that New Mexico has black widows. Specifically it has black widows in my shed and under my house and in my mailbox. I've also noticed that while not all of them actually have an hourglass-like mark on their abdomen, they all have SOME kind of red mark there, and their bodies are rather unlike other spiders that I've seen. Those things I kill without compunction because I don't need anyone visiting, bringing their kids, and said kids being bitten by a spider that has a venom that can do any significant amount of damage to them, no matter how unlikely it is. Other spiders get a pass, though.

[Count Chocula]

I don't have an issue with them indoors as long as they're small and stay out of the way, and stay TF off my furniture and bedding. So far, so good in my house.

I still think they're alien lifeforms from another planet that landed here on a meteorite 10,000 years ago and infested the world. Seriously, they're not even classified as insects. And the way they preserve/torture their prey to feed their spiderlings? Yuck.

True story: some years ago, I was on a business trip to Montreal, Canada. I hauled my ass 1500 miles in two days, and when I got into my hotel at 11:00PM the cell rings. It's my wife: "There's a hhhHHHUUUUUgggeee spider in our closet! What do I do?"

Well, what can I say? "Babe, I'm 1,500 miles away from you, I can't kill it, get the fly swatter or a rolled up newspaper and kill the damn thing."

"Great, another useless man!!" Click. She couldn't slam the phone because it's cordless, heh.

She calls me back 10 minutes later, after talking to one of my guys (an app engineer at work). "He said that it's probably a Wolf Spider since it's big and furry, and if it's a female it's got eggs on it and if I squish it the babies will go all over the place and he won't come over to kill it!!!?!?!?!?!!" Thanks, Bill. You pussy. My response: "well we have the air pistol babe, maybe you could shoot it." THAT got the reply it deserved, which need not be elucidated here.

My wife calls me back 30 minutes later (mind you I'm in Montreal, I had two 12-hour driving days and a seminar to conduct at 8AM, and it's now around midnight) to give me the good news. Our next door neighbor at the time, an EMT, had come home from his shift and she accosted him to kill the spider. His response was "ha ha, widdle wifey is afwaid of the big bad spiiider" by his face and body language. But he agreed to kill it, thank God.

Armed with a broom, he stood ready while my wife opened the closet door. The antagonists' eyes met. Our intrepid EMT exclaimed "holy SHIT!," jumped back, then stepped up and swung a mighty blow. The fucking spider dodged the swing and wagged its mandibles as if to say "is that all ya got?" Oh, it was on.

After an epic battle that ranged over the wall, floor and ceiling, my wife's rescuer finally made contact with the elusive arachnid, and with a SPLAT! that resounded throughout the residence flattened the elusive alien being. She thanked him profusely but not Biblically according to the timeline, disposed of the corpse, and called me with the good news. Along with the offhand comment that "we left the bloodstain on the wall so you can see I wasn't exaggerating." Joy. When I got home and checked, the stain was almost as big as my palm and yes, it was a wolf spider. Those fuckers are just too damn big and scary to be allowed indoors.

Ditto on the widows. IIRC, Florida has three species of them and I've encountered two of the species, the black and brown, out hiking and at work. Nasty little buggers.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Spiders eat bugs
Spiders don't eat me
Spiders are awesome!

That's pretty much the train of thought that got me over mine...

Now it's limited to the ones I know are dangerous... Though that's probably cost a few of the local tiny wolf spiders because they're a little too close for comfort to Brown Recluse in looks...

[Ilya Muromets]

There's a jumping spider right atop my monitor right now. I can't help but giggle at it's movements. It just looks, well, cute.

I've no problem with spiders. I had a wolf spider living in my room for months and I never bothered chasing it out, though I did take care to shake my shoes before putting them on. No sense in unnecessary misunderstandings between roommates.

'Course, I don't know of any poisonous species living in my locality. I'd probably be a lot more paranoid if I did.

[Invictus ChiKen]

This is Invictus Chiken to the Litany of Fury, I need Exterminatus on this location over...

No not scare at all honest...

[Night_stalker]

Wait, how did you get Exterminatus clearance? I'm still waiting for my Purgation squad to arrive! Emperor damn this new pest company!

[Temujin]

That the spirit! Just think of them as pint sized Tyranids.

[Night_stalker]

AHHH, PINT SIZED GENESTEALERS! Where's a Terminator suit of armor when one needs it? Ahh well, at least I have my thunder hammer and storm bolter.