Wolf Spider Control

Keep spiders from entering your home. They are very sneaky creatures. They don't need much of a hole to make their entrance into your home. You need to do a thorough inspection of potential entry points. Look at every window and door to make sure the screens are intact and seating snugly into the frame. Look around the window trim and wall siding for any gaps which could be letting them in. Also, be sure to check around your foundation for cracks and holes in the brick or concrete. Not only can these spaces allow pests inside, they might be a sign of a larger structural problem. Sealing them with caulk is a only a temporary solution.

Clean around the outside of your house. Wolf spiders are ordinarily pretty shy; they like to be under things, well protected from the elements and predators. They crave shelter for raising their young, and take advantage of camouflage when hunting. If you have wood piles or areas of dishevelment around the borders of your house, you are creating a safe zone; from here the spiders will mount an attack upon the inner-sanctum of your home. Get rid of old junk, decomposing debris, piles of bricks, and stacks of wood. It will put some distance between you and the spider's natural habitat.

Clean the inside of your home. Just as bad as having clutter around the outside of your house, piles of junk inside provide an ideal living space for wolf spiders. This is especially true in the darker, less-traveled places in our homes. Basements, cellars, attics, crawl-spaces; they are probably already home to thousands of pesky bugs and spiders. Avoiding clutter, especially around the edges, will make spiders easier to spot, and make you feel better about your living space. You don't really need all of that stuff anyway, do you?

Capture and relocate spiders and eggs. When you spot a spider, the important thing is to not panic. Wolf spiders may have a ferocious name, but for the most part they won't attack you unless provoked. You must remember, however, that they have tiny little brains and can't tell your finger from a tasty bug or a spider-eating bird. Their bite isn't a threat to your health, but it's still no fun. Try to place a container in front of the spider and coax her into it with a stick or pencil. If you see an egg pouch with her or hanging nearby, collect that too, or you'll have hundreds more spiders. Release them in a forested area away from houses.

Killing spiders is easy. The urge to kill a wolf spider seen skittering across a floor is natural. Just hearing the statistic about how many spiders crawl in our mouths while we are sleeping makes them something to fear. That fear is somewhat misplaced; there are very few spiders which can actually harm humans in the United States, and the wolf spider isn't one of them. As beneficial as spiders can be in controlling annoying flying bugs like flies and mosquitoes, it seems a shame to squash them with your shoe or a rolled-up newspaper. Relocation is the way to go, but whatever happens, happens.