Old houses tend to develop their own little ecosystems.  Esperanza has bats in the roof, salamanders in the basement, red squirrels and chipmunks in the walls, and so forth.  This freaks out most people.  Perhaps the largest, visible population is the spider one.  For the most part, I have a love/hate relationship with them.  On the ‘hate’ side, I really would prefer to stay far away from them, especially the occasional massive wood spider.  Spider droppings do not come off of things, unless you use sand-paper.  Spider webs tend to illustrate, graphically, my cleaning skills.*  On the other hand…well, they are predators.  Presumably a healthy spider population helps to control the other insects.  Of course, a healthy predator population means a healthy prey population…. 

I practice survival of the fittest with the spiders.  If they can outrun the vacuum cleaner, they live.  Unless they are in a truly wrong spot (bathrooms, kitchen, beds/chairs) or they are setting up long-term living/breeding quarters, in which case I chase them down with said vacuum.  I prefer the minute green/gold spiders that don’t make real webs over the wood spiders though. 

This year though, the spiders really have been out of control.  Currently all spiders are being sucked up by the vacuum.  Interestingly, other people have commented on having way too many spiders as well.  Possibly last year’s very mild winter?  The hot, dry weather? Hard to say.

*This is actually not all bad, it serves as motivation.