This year has been the worst ever for spiders in our basement!!!! The worst part is that they all look the same, so they must be breeding somewhere. I have killed at least 15 of this size over the past month. I was in my room when one crawled from under my bed about a half hour ago. Normally I just squish them, but I decided to catch this one so I could really look at it close and figure out what kind of spider it is. This spider is actually missing a leg because my aim was a bit off when I trapped it under the bottle and the rim caught one of its legs. (AUGH...another spider just crawled down my wall!!!!). This needs to end!
Here is a picture of the spider I caught. If you zoom in you can see the hairs on its legs!!!!
I looked up some common household spiders in Minnesota, and this spider looks closest to the grass spider. It has the same black and yellowish stripes on the front of its body. Its bottom section is slightly different shaped from some of the pictures on Google images, but every species has different variations. http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/housingandclothing/dk1033.html or http://bugguide.net/node/view/1974 both have fairly decent photographs of a grass spider. These websites also says that the spiders construct funnel webs that they retreat into, but I haven't seen any such webs in our basement. Maybe they are tucked away in the storage room, or maybe they actually live outside and accidentally find their way inside.
The first website gives a few suggestions on how to get rid of spiders. It suggesting vacuuming and cleaning out all webs and other bugs that the spiders can feed on. I think I am going to conduct a thorough cleaning of the basement tomorrow. We might also buy some insecticide to spray around the perimeter of the house to prevent more from coming in.
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