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jcadam

Spiders are allowed to live/hunt in my house, but they must remain unseen at all times.

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Anything (and anyone) is allowed to live in your house if they can stay unseen.

Not skunks!!

nor rodents

Nor people.

Like this person?

“Experience: a stranger secretly lived in my home”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/10/experie...

Check out this wonderful, unforgettable spanish movie on that theme, much better than any plot summary could suggest (and also I don't want to give spoilers) : The Uninvited Guest (El habitante incierto)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436374/

Taking the theme to a fantastic extreme is the amazing french miniseries Beyond the Walls (Au-delà des murs), which has a whole bizarre world secretly living in your house.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4999820/

I can't leave this set of foreign movie recommendations on the topic without a mention of the South Korean movie Parasite which won Best Picture in 2020 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6751668/

I was reminded of the college student who found a guy in her closet wearing her clothes:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/cl...

Well . . . Enumclaw, after all. That somehow seems tame.

http://tonsoffacts.com/25-fascinating-and-amazing-facts-abou...

There was an episode of Loveline (the radio show) ~20-25 years ago where a young woman called in who grew up in a large mansion. Part of what she brought up was that there was a man who lived in the walls/unfinished spaces of the wing of the mansion her bedroom was in, and I believe that one of the exits from inside the walls just happened to be her bedroom closet. Basically every kid's worst nightmare.

While they all can live in your house if unseen I think your parent really meant the allowed part of it.

As in they do acknowledge the usefulness of spiders in general while also being significantly creeped out by them.

Same here btw. And for other species too. Like ants. I acknowledge that they are very useful creatures so they can totally "dig up the lawn" and I don't care. They can also climb up the cherry trees and others and do their thing there as long as I get enough cherries to make jam and eat in summer. But as soon as even one sets foot in the house I try everything to kill said colony.

For some reason, this evokes very hilarious imagery.

I figure the spider is preferable to what ever it is eating in my house.

My rule is that they’re free wherever they roam but if they’re on my body I’m also free to be irrationally afraid until I get them somewhere safer. When I live with other humans, I try to encourage being similarly comfortable with their proximity, because I know they don’t much want contact with us either.

With my pup, I just hope they stay off the floor because I know their only hope is being faster than her attention and her curious mouth.

Mine get anywhere but the living area, then there’s some calculus around whether my partner sees it first and how many spiders I see in the house in a given period of time. Generally though I make efforts to put them outside unharmed.

We usually try to capture the ones we encounter and send them outside. If we find ourselves doing that again soon after for the same part of the house, we'll give that room an extra thorough cleaning, on the theory that the spiders have food because the spider food has food because of us.

I have the same rules

That set of rules is as restrictive as it's possible to be. What is the operational difference between "cockroaches are free to live in my house, but they must remain unseen at all times" and "cockroaches are forbidden from living in my house"?

My approach is they're free to do whatever as long as they keep out of my way. That is, they're welcome to set up webs in ceiling corners, or in hard-to-reach areas that I forget exist. But if they try setting up a web near a place I frequent or things I often use, I'll give them a forceful relocation.

Once you hear them, you can't unsee them, even if you haven't seen them yet...

Traps. Mechanical, glue, poison, etc, are all available and don't care if you see the critter before doing what they do.

I won't use them for anything that doesn't pose a structural threat to my house (i.e. termites), but others do.

You set out traps for everything you'd prefer not to have in your house, just on spec?

How do you move around without sticking to a dozen traps and having a dozen others slam shut on you?

Yep, diatomaceous earth is what popped into mind for me.

Subterranean termites are an interesting case. They usually live in a big colony that is not in your home, and just work in your home. And unless you live in a very sparsely populated area, that same colony is probably working from your neighbor's homes too.

When a pest control company deals with them in your home the poison they use is designed to not kill right away. It is defined to get on the ones in your home and be carried back to the colony with them where it spreads to all of them. Then when it kills it takes out the whole colony.

Note this means that even though they might be in several houses in the neighborhood whoever first discovers them in their house usually ends up paying to remove them from the whole neighborhood. That can cost a couple thousand dollars or more.

I wonder if anyone ever tries to take advantage of that? For example if you find you have subterranean termites give a neighbor or two gift certificates for a termite inspection, in the hope that one of them also has them and pays to get rid of them.

What's the incentive for the pest company to do it that way, vs just kill the current ones/make the house unattractive (and thus expect probably to get business from some neighbours soon)?

They really shouldn't be in multiple houses. The subterranean ones are supposed to create mud tubes up from ground to the wooden part of the house. Those should be noticeable for most people. There is another type, but those require a water source. So you'd need a leak in the exterior or in a pipe. It's fairly unlikely these circumstances present themselves at the same time for multiple houses in the vicinity.

Optimism.

I think the parent was joking.

One might perform “preventative” measures like spraying for pests. This would be operationally different from killing them only when seen.

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