Charlotte's Web

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by Morgan Fogarty
Bio | Email | Follow: @MorganFogarty

Story Created: May 16, 2012 at 9:04 PM EDT

Story Updated: May 16, 2012 at 10:35 PM EDT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - With the swish of what looks like an overgrown toilet bowl cleaner, the spiders taking up residence at one southeast Charlotte home are about to be evicted.  "I've seen them in different places," says the man who lives here.

While Charlotte isn't facing an invasion like the one in the 1990 movie "Arachnophobia,"  Killingsworth Environmental is getting more calls about spiders this spring.  President Mike Rogers says it's because of the mild winter.  More spiders survived, but also other insects.  "The more insects that you have around your property, than the more food you're gonna have for the spiders," says Rogers.

That includes jumping spiders, brown house spiders and wolf spiders.  But the two spiders Charlotte area residents need to be cautious of are the brown recluse spiders and black widows.  Rogers says, "We see a lot of black widows, we really see a lot of 'em.  We see 'em a lot in crawl spaces." 
 
There's no easy way to get rid of spiders.  Their webs are incredibly strong and the arachnids have to be sprayed directly to be eliminated.  Killingsworth uses a chemical called Web Away that gives off a scent spiders don't like.  As for what you can do at home?  Knock down the webs.  Spiders don't like the aggravation. 

And if Charlotte's web has your stomach in knots, consider this:  "The only place on earth that there are no spiders is Antarctica," says Rogers.
 
Rogers says his company is also getting a lot of calls about ant infestations.  There are 19 species of ants and they are very resilient.

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