EXAMINER.COM - It's September, and that means it's spider season. The females tend to make webs and stay in one place, but a very few may enter a house. This is the time when male hobos are wandering around, though, looking for mates. They can enter garages, crawl spaces and houses in large numbers- any place they don't have to climb something slick to get in. The majority of hobo bites take place in September; around October the adult males die off. The females make their egg cases –usually outside- and then die in November. Most spiders are harmless to humans and are beneficial in that they eat lots of pest insects, but hobo spiders are a different matter.
The hobo spider, Tegenaria agrestis, was brought over from Europe to the port of Seattle in the 1930s. In Europe it has competitor species and is not a problem to humans; in the US, it has free run and enters houses. It's spread throughout the Inland Northwest, into Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. This is the spider that used to be called the Aggressive House Spider because it would run at people when startled. It turned out that they really aren't aggressive, but see very poorly and are apt to run right at the thing that is scaring them. Small comfort when one is running up your arm, as one did this morning! click here to read more
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