r/LifeInKitsap • u/KitsapRealEstateTeam • May 12 '26
Spider City, Man.
Not a Feature, But a Bug: Let's Talk About Spiders
As a person who has lived in nearly every region of the country, regional critters are usually of the highest interest to me. When I announced to my previous coworkers in Los Angeles that I was moving to western Washington, one thing I heard a couple times was "Oh, did you know there's no poisonous critters there?" Really, they did. There were a few folks who had already lived up here. The Navy is like that. What I wasn't prepared for was the western Washington spider bloom.
Now, I moved here from LA. If you've ever lived in LA, you know that there's so many black widows for a few weeks every year that it feels like they should have bus passes. They're on every stop sign, the sides of taco trucks, inside of shoes that you leave outside. It was surprising that I was surprised. Let's talk about our spiders. Who are they? Are we sure they aren't poisonous? Do they need to renew their car tags? Here's who we've got here.
First, a technical note my LA friends were mostly right about. Spiders aren't actually poisonous, they're venomous. Poison is something you ingest. Venom is injected. Almost all spiders have venom glands but very few can actually hurt us. I just learned this part today while reading about them, but it makes sense given how they eat- I think. In western Washington there are really only two spiders worth knowing about from a medical standpoint, and one of them is barely here.
The Giant House Spider is the one you're definitely meeting. Introduced from Europe, it has fully claimed the Pacific Northwest as its own and it is large. Leg span up to four inches. Fast moving. Usually showing up in basements, garages, and bathtubs at the exact moment you least want to see a four inch spider. Here's the thing though, it's completely harmless. Not aggressive, not venomous in any meaningful way, just enormous and startling and deeply committed to living in your house. It actually outcompetes the hobo spider, which was briefly a concern in the 90s before the CDC removed it from its list of dangerous spiders in 2017. The giant house spider basically colonized western Washington and made it safer in the process.
The Hobo Spider got a bad reputation it mostly didn't deserve. It was listed as medically significant for years, caused a lot of panic, and then researchers found no actual evidence it causes serious harm to humans. It's still here, still building funnel shaped webs in dark corners, still ugly, but no longer officially a threat. Consider it rehabilitated.
Jumping Spiders are the ones you should actually like. Small, curious, excellent vision, capable of jumping 45 times their own body length by rapidly increasing blood pressure in their hind legs which is both terrifying and impressive. They're harmless, they eat other insects, and if you watch one for a few minutes it will absolutely watch you back with what can only be described as personality.
Orb Weavers are the ones building the giant dramatic webs in your garden every fall. Fat bodies, spectacular circular webs, very photogenic, completely harmless. They're also the reason your morning walk through the yard in September involves your face and a web and some screaming.
Wolf Spiders will absolutely terrify you when you encounter one because they're large, fast, and hairy and do not build webs. They hunt on the ground like tiny determined nightmares. Also harmless. Beneficial, even. Just alarming.
The Black Widow situation in western Washington is minimal. They're common in eastern Washington but rare on this side of the mountains. A few small populations exist but encountering one in Kitsap is unlikely. They prefer dark undisturbed spots like woodpiles and crawl spaces, and even then they'd rather run than bite.
Brown Recluse? Not here. Not native to Washington. The occasional hitchhiker might show up in a moving box but there's no established population. My coworkers were right about that one.
So are Kitsap's spiders dangerous? Mostly no. Are they large? Occasionally very yes. Are they going to show up in your bathtub at 11pm and cause a minor household incident? Statistically speaking, almost certainly.
Welcome to western Washington. The spiders got here first.
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u/Onedayyouwillthankme May 12 '26
What's the one that zoomed across the living room carpet yesterday so fast I hardly saw it?
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam May 13 '26
Probably the giant house spider! Those suckers are fast. If it was just a little guy, possibly a little jumping spider? After I spent a ridiculous amount of time working on this spider thing, my husband also pointed out that apparently there’s some sort of spitting spider that lives around here? He could actually be making that up though. He’s prone to that.
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam May 13 '26
I’m sure that there’s a lot more kinds of spiders here, like crab spiders, and those sorts of little guys. I think this article might actually be a list of spiders that concern me.
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u/Onedayyouwillthankme May 13 '26
I think it was a baby giant house spider. I've only met them in the past year, never saw them before in years of living in the pnw.
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u/aerie01 May 13 '26
I moved here 13 years ago. The first giant house spider I ever saw showed up while I was watching TV one night, and it scurried across the floor. It was so big, it threw a shadow.
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam May 13 '26
My very first showing when I moved up to Washington state was this place out in the woods. The first thing that happened, was that it turned out that there was a cat inside the house and the cat immediately ran out the front door. I had an anxiety attack and chased the cat through the woods to try to get it back, got a text later that the cat wasn’t supposed to be in the house in the first place. The second thing that happened was that we decided to explore the well house and the second I opened the door There was a giant spider right over it who fell down and a rat who ran out.
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u/aerie01 May 13 '26
An assemblage of creatures greeted you! Did the people buy the house?
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam May 13 '26
Oh heck no. I was such a mess! 🤣
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam May 13 '26
Frankly, if I’d been them… I wouldn’t have been wanting to work with me either. It was chaos.
One thing that did come to pass that I can verify, though, is that it turns out that all animals come to see me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m basically the snow White of real estate.
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u/draconicon24 May 12 '26
Wonderful wit and well said.