Spiders

[kags]

Jonathan Ross is on the Radio 2 breakfast show this week, and this morning he was talking about spiders. Somebody emailed in and said that putting conkers in your house keeps spiders away - does anybody know if this is has any basis in fact? Fortunately there is a huge conker tree in my in-laws' garden, I am willing to try anything.

[lindapinda]

Never heard about that before kags,,but it would be great if it did work! Speaking as an arachnaphobe!!

[brachiopod]

Huff...huf ... puff....haa. Phew !!

Sorry, kags, out of breath. I've just been over the park doing a spot of late-night conkering. And no-one told me that they have dog patrols over there now !

Anyway, I now have lots of conkers. Some of them are a bit white still - not quite 'ripe' - so I've left the 'shells' on - extra spiky!!
So if that big hairy b�gger from last night thinks she's going to crawl up my living room wall again, she can think again - I am now armed and dangerous.

I shall let you know how I get on.

[jacko50]

i thought perhaps the spiders saw the conkers and not having a big brain thought they had climed a horse chestnut tree and thought oh ****** and left .

i don't know where these belong so sort them out yourselves."" ,, . !,,,..

[kags]

I did a bit of research and found that spiders don't like the smell of horse chestnut. I suggested to my kids we build a tree house and live in Grandma's conker tree for a few months, and they are up for it.

A beter idea I discovered was to bash the conkers up, boil them for 10 minutes then strain the liquid off and spray it round your room to keep the b*ggers away. I have no idea what it will smell like - chestnuts roasting on an open fire perhaps.

I like brachiopiod's idea of chucking the conkers at the beasties, but I fear my aim would be a bit wobbly as they reduce me to a shivering wreck.

[VINNY100_2]

Ive got massive spiders in my front room,theres one big *** ** * ***** that patrols all night long.I thinks hes got a few wifes dotted around under each chair.and he spends all his time servicing each and everyone.And ive grown quite fond of him,And in any case they all dissapear in a few days untill the same time next year.so good luck to him !!hes wellcome in my house anytime( ::)=ps..my daughters scared of them.she stays in her room...so i can watch what i want on the telly(:)

[VINNY100_2]

son of a bi***h...hardly swearing ed(:)

[Loosehead]

Trouble is kags you may get shot of the spiders but then all the other creepy crawlies will run riot, spiders eat all the undesirables, I know they are unpopular but they are in fact our friends, they patrol the house eating all manner of undesirables.

[kags]

I know that they are our friends really, problem is if you have a phobia, all logic goes out of the window! They are big this year, maybe because of the warm wet summer, I suppose they will just continue to get bigger as the climate changes. One absolutely huge one ran up my son's leg, and he calmly flicked it away. I would have had to be hospitalised if it ran up MY leg. Silly I know!

[lindapinda]

I'd have been in the next bed to you kags!!

[Piper-AK]

I'm extremely worried as I've seen no spiders this year yet of any reasonable size.  I've seen hundreds of babies.  I've seen no flies.  Baby spiders eat flies to get big. 

Baby spiders + flies eaten = lots and lots of huge enormous spiders that my mum will be ringing me up at all hours to remove from her bedroom......

[zylvajake]

Spiders hate conkers. I run a small home cleaning business, so I see alot of spiders, and a lot of cobwebs. One house I go to have conkers in small piles in each of the room on the window cills, in this house I have seen no cobwebs, and only 1 very tiny spider. I will be collecting conkers for all my customers this Autumn to save me a clearing cobwebs next year!