Don't Knock Spiders! Wolf Spiders Eat Pests!

Just picture it. You’re in your bathroom, doing your weekly cleaning and sweeping out all the crevices… and there it is. You’re face to, er, face, with a large, hairy, thick-legged spider – staring right down its soft mandibles. I know this may seem like the perfect time to freak out and leap away, smashing the creature if you can.

But remember that old saying about books and their covers?

While the Florida Wolf Spider may look hideous and scary – and the name doesn’t help – these arachnids are great to have around.

Barks & Bites

For starters, unless they’re placed in a really bad position, wolf spiders do not attack humans. And even if they did, they’re non-venomous. They also seldom creep into your home, preferring the tall grass and thick Florida shrubberies.

No webs for the Lycosidae. The markings on their backs help them blend into the ground, where they prowl or wait to pounce on unsuspecting crickets, earwigs, flies and even sometimes ants. They tend to be largely nocturnal hunters. When they do occasionally end up in your home, it’s because they have followed a food source inside. So it’s a good thing that they’re there!

Spider-back Rides!

One of the stranger traits of the wolf spider is how they care for their young. They will almost never breed inside. When the female becomes pregnant, she lays several dozen eggs, wrapping them in a ball or sac of web that she carries on her back. After the eggs hatch, the babies ride momma’s back around until they are large enough to break off and hunt on their own.

They prefer to be close to water – hence the bathroom habitat – and will occasionally come inside during those few days every year we drop below 50-degrees. Don’t judge – we know you’re putting on a sweater too.

If you do happen to encounter a wolf spider in your home and just can’t tolerate it, Good News Pest Solutions can come take care of it. But more importantly, we need to locate and eliminate their food source. Otherwise, you’re trading the natural exterminator for a potentially infested house.

Our most popular solution – Go Green Perimeter Plus – handles all the standard creepy crawlies you'll encounter in your Florida home. And the initial treatment includes recommendations for sealing all the potential entry points for those bugs as well as our arachnid friends. To learn more from one of our highly trained technicians, just give us a call!