By David Wall
As it gets colder, some of you will begin to see spiders in your home. They’ll come in all sizes, and you’ll try to kill each and every one of them. But hold on a second. Given a chance, some of the spiders do good in your home! These good guys are called Wolf spiders.
Wolf spiders are different from a lot of other spiders. They’re ground hunters. You aren’t going to find them in your shoes on an upper self in your closet! They don’t spin webs and try to stay out of your eyesight! For speed, they are very fast, and while most spiders have very poor vision, wolf spiders have very good vision. While fast hunters, they prefer to live and hunt alone. They don’t really care for people and will normally scurry for cover when they hear the sound of your footsteps.
On a more positive note, they eat all bugs you consider to be pests! This includes centipedes, crickets, other spiders, ants, flies, and many others.
For easy identification, unlike most spiders who have all their eyes the same size, Wolf spiders have two large eyes, with four below and two above them.
If you ever move on to the next step, wolf spiders are very gently, and they can make great pets. They’re curious, but very gently. Unless very scared or hurt, they almost never bite. Further, there is actual research on how their silk is helping to slow global warming. OK, let’s back up. While they can make great pets, but don’t. If provoked into biting, you’ll find that it HURTS!
So, before you let your killer instinct get the best of you and try to kill every one of them, please consider letting them be. At worst, consider releasing them elsewhere.