ST. LOUIS — St. Louis is in the heat of summer, and as residents try to keep their homes as cool as possible, they may find some unwanted house guests trying to get in on the action.
Sightings of spiders inside homes spike during the summer's hottest days, according to Rottler Pest Solutions Technical Director Jay Everitt. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) said spiders live in virtually every habitat in the state, including human homes. Part of their prevalence in the summer stems from the arachnids' cold-blooded nature.
"Spider activity often spikes in the 90- to 95-degree range," Everitt said. "As things warm up, spiders are more mobile and their metabolism is a lot stronger and quicker, so they go searching for more food."
Oftentimes, spiders live in the attics of homes after crawling off overhanging tree branches and entering through ventilation or gaps under shingles. But, as temperatures increase, spiders will go on the move once more.
"[Spiders] are perfectly comfortable in that 80-degree range, but you start getting up to 100 or 120, I mean in attics it can get to 150 degrees pretty easily when we get to 100 degrees outside," Everitt said. "That drives them to the cooler parts of the home. For us, we're turning air conditioners, that's cooler for [the spiders] ... and they'll come down into living spaces."
The most common spiders Rottler gets calls about around Missouri are brown recluses and black widows, according to Everitt. Brown recluses, specifically, are a large reason why extermination services even exist.
"The exterminating industry is built in large part upon the presence of brown recluses and other undesirable creatures in and around our homes," MDC said on its brown recluse page. "Like all spiders, in the wild, brown recluses help decrease the populations of insects and other spiders. They do this also within the 'habitat' of our homes, where they consume many of the other creepy-crawlies that hide in our basements, closets, and attics and behind bookcases and furniture."
Outside of calling exterminators, Everitt suggests people take precautions when trying to deal with pests on their own, including reading safety instructions of products, wearing proper protective gloves, and ditching open-toed shoes.
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