Looks like Hobo season is almost here.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by oldafretired

Seems like the male spiders go roaming around in the fall. I guess I'll be getting away from the desert recluse but moving into hobo territory. I'm going to go around the house with tubes of caulk and silicone and seal up every little hole and gap before I move in. I hate spiders!!! LOL This is from an article a couple years ago:

OH NO! It's Hobo Spider Season - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com


Anyone try traps like these and do they do any good?

Amazon.com: hobo spider trap

I don't know. I only used the Big H brand traps, and that was a long time ago now.
I think that if you called the emergency room at a hospital, they might know which traps work, but that's just a guess. Or maybe the local Ag Extension Office.

My friend Darwin Vest, the guy who identified the Hobo and invented the Big H trap, told me Idaho has a natural predator on the Hobo. They are a very tiny little black spider, shiny, like a black widow, but so small they can't hurt a human at all. They love to kill Hobos. Like some wasps, they paralyze the Hobo and lay their eggs inside it. Their larva eat the Hobo from the inside out. The adult spiders also feed on the Hobos themselves even if they don't lay any eggs.

If you have these in your yard, no Hobos. Looking for them is very hard because they're so small, but you can identify them by their butt, which is almost completely round. They live on the ground, and stick around; if no Hobos, they eat other predatory insects like centipedes instead. They never come into a house. As the Hobos spread, so do these little guys.

Darwin was cultivating them for use, like they do with ladybugs for aphid control, when he disappeared about 15 years or so ago, so I guess that project never got off the ground.

Darwin didn't drive, and he vanished while walking home after spending an evening at his favorite bar one evening and has never been seen since. The cops think he was mugged and probably killed, but they never found any substantial evidence other than a little blood in a downtown alley. He was well known about town, and eccentric as all get-outs, but had a lot of friends.

The Hobos were well known; they got the name because they hitched a ride to come here on a boat and landed in Seattle about 50 years ago. They have been migrating slowly eastward ever since. They've been in N. Idaho longer than down here, and now they are being found in Ogden and the Salt Lake valley in Utah.

They are a common garden spider in Germany, but they never go into homes there. That was why entomologists overlooked them at first… entering houses is an entirely new behavior for them.

[aiden_is]

Originally Posted by banjomike

My friend Darwin Vest, the guy who identified the Hobo and invented the Big H trap, told me Idaho has a natural predator on the Hobo...

Jeez Mike, you just can't make that stuff up! Did he ever identify the species of spider to you that he was trying to cultivate? Did no one try to pick up where he left off?

[oldafretired]

Thanks for the info, Banjo. I just ordered a bunch of the Big H Traps and will keep them in storage in case they are really discontinued. I should be ready for those hobos if they decide to show up and move in.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by aiden_is

Jeez Mike, you just can't make that stuff up! Did he ever identify the species of spider to you that he was trying to cultivate? Did no one try to pick up where he left off?

I know!
It is indeed a strange story.
I came across an internet article that he must have written that had pictures of the Hobo's predators. There were others, but he concentrated on the tiny black one, as it was the Hobo's worst nightmare. I saw the page years ago, but I'm sure some digging will turn it up. I'm sure all you will have to do is google Darwin Vest.

I have heard nothing about any further research or development of the other spiders after Darwin's disappearance, but I think they're common all over Idaho.

But Darwin Vest was a strange guy. He always lived with his mother, and the basement of her house was his lab. He discovered that the Hobo, not the Brown Recluse, was the cause of the then-recent outbreak of necrotic spider bites by asking the citizens of Bonneville County to bring in live spiders that were caught in homes all over the county to the public library for study. For over a year, there was always a table nest to he library's main doors that was full of Mason jars with spiders in them.

He said he discovered a bunch of species that were unknown to be living here before that collection, and it earned him big respect from all the biologists who specialize in spiders. He must have gotten some research funding as a result, as he was completely self-taught.
As far as I know, he never had any assistants; he did all his work alone, down in the basement. He was apparently fastidious in his research procedures and kept good records.

Darwin was also an expert on toxic snakes and other insects, and plants. He kept rattlers down in that basement, too.

For all his sociability, I don't think he had any very close friends, and there were long periods of time when he didn't leave the house at all. Even though he liked to hang out in several local popular bars, I never saw him get very drunk, but he did drink, and he didn't hold his liquor well.

He often took late night walks as well. He probably did a lot of his bug gathering at night, and the riverbanks were probably good territory for the critters he collected.

According to a retired police officer I know, he was beaten up once by a guy who assaulted and robbed him who was on work release. Darwin never reported it, but the ex cop suspects his assailant could have harbored a grudge, believing that Darwin did. The guy has been in and out of trouble here for a long time, but is not a suspect at present.

At the time of his disappearance, Darwin was in the final stages of negotiations with the company that made his spider trap, and may have gotten an advance on the deal, so others may have gone after him in a robbery gone wrong. Darwin wasn't careful about what he told others very much.

It is possible that Darwin may have gone down to the river bank and stumbled in, as there are a lot of shallow banks along the river in spots. Others have done so and drowned in the past. The falls creates a very strong undertow, and the river is very deep and narrow in the downtown area, and is cold year-round.

Darwin has been gone for since June 1999. I doubt we will ever know what happened to him.

Another interesting unrelated twist; his older brother Dale was a famous country song writer who wrote about a dozen Top 40 country hits.
I knew Dale longer than Darwin, and Dale has since passed on as well. Merle Haggard, Doug Kershaw, and especially Tommy Overstreet, his close friend, all had major hits with his songs.

Dale and Darwin were a lot alike in their personalities, and each became quite successful and famous in rare occupations.

[Cnynrat]

This looks like a web site Darwin put up about the Hobo spider.

[f5fstop]

Big brown and hairy, and average size is 18mm (that's about 3/4 of an inch). Doesn't sound big to me (of course I used to have a couple pet tarantulas years ago). Had a local black widow, about that same size, who got peed when I tramped into her ugly web (by mistake) about three years ago. Talk about some weird pain. Not only in the leg, but I thought I had appendicitis, was cramping like crazy, and the bite area was really nasty for a over a month. Lucky for me, the hospitals in this general area carried the anti-venom, and I was not allergic to a horse serum.

Now it is nothing more than a big brown spot on my leg. But taught me to stop wearing shorts when hiking in the Utah desert.

When I lived in TN, the biggest problem there was the brown recluse.

We used sticky spider pads to trap them and they worked great. Used to kill about a half dozen a month in the office building. Black widows tend to stay out of the houses and keep to themselves, so long as you don't tramp on their webs on a nice morning hike.

Damn recluse and black widows seem to be every place I have lived from Turkey to Utah.

Hobo's don't bother me, we have had a few reported in southern Utah. Not that I want any of them taking up residence in my new house, unless they pay rent. But if they do, I have a few size 11's that will shorten their lives.

[aiden_is]

Well, I have a 10 month old who is all over the place. A bite from an adult male hobo could be very dangerous for him, so I want to make sure I'm covering all my bases.

From Cynrat's link (thanks!), it looks like Steatoda hespera is the species Banjomike was talking about. Interestingly enough, it too is poisonous to mammals, but apparently has never a human.