Well...count me as a Spider and insect lover -- to an educated point.
Unless you are hyper-sensitive to small critters bites or stings -- you probably all ready know if you are and your Doc has hopefully provided you the knowledge and antidotes you may need. If not in that very small group of unlucky people -- real fear -- like someone said, 'Is a learned thing.'
In the US the only truly "poisonous" spiders are the Brown Recluse and the Black Widow. If I find these in my house, I carefully remove them to a pasture or woods far away from me where they can help there, without being a danger to me.
As far as the others...they are only there because there is food around. I absolutely refuse to spray lethal "nerve toxins" in my house, around my family and pets and all our food, too. Don't fool yourself...you cannot have it both ways. You can't kill any bugs, without poisoning yourself, too....unless ya' whack 'em the old fashioned way.
There are other more benign ways to kill germy roaches, silverfish and ants, bad spiders etc. Use Boric Acid, Diatomacious Earth or pyrethrums. Use carefully to protect your good spiders and pets. Apply to the "bad spiders" if you must or relocate them and spray their nests and egg sacks, round dense white "cotten balls" hanging in the web, with WD40, etc. to kill eggs/larvae.
I didn't know that spiders killed other bugs! Who sez this board isn't educational. lol!
I have Daddy Longlegs in here a lot and they don't bother me, but those fat little black ones that are about the size of my thumbnail---I don't like THEM crawling around!
Yep, they eat any kind of bugs, INCLUDING OTHER SPIDERS.
The little 'fat' black one are probably just "Jumping or Hopping spiders, they really like attacking and eating flies, fleas, mosquitoes, aphids, etc. The SCARY name a WOLF spider has means nothing...they are harmless.
My favorite outside type is the "Arigope" I call them "Cornsilk or Garden Spiders" , they are about 2" - 3" across with legs, the abdomen has bright yellow and black markings on it, the cephlothorax (head & torso where the legs are) is black. They spin the most beautiful "ORB" type web...it can be 3' - 4' across. They eat the grasshoppers that eat my Herb garden.
The grasshoppers I catch have fed on my onions, basil, tarragon, tyme and sage...? I freeze them, then take off their legs (too sharp) and saute them in butter and garlic. No other spices are needed --- as they have already... "heheh" marinated themselves eating my stuff ! Ummmmmm, Delicious...
BTW, in N. America...no ORB weaver spider is poisonous, they are fun and playful --- and beautiful.
Sirona, I like what you said about a method of "de-bugging" a persons mind about the un-reasoning fear people have about "unknown" things like spiders, education is the answer... lol just like the good re-education we try to do HERE at JWD, trying to remove fear of the unknown of life -- leaving the WTS's web. lol...couldn't help it !