Seattle's giant house spiders: Big and fast, but they won't kill you

Certain spiders are so big, they make even the most spider-friendly humans leap off the couch, and those spiders, appropriately named “giant house spiders,” are on the move this time of year, looking for a mate.

You know the ones. They are quick and nimble. In fact, they can skitter across the living room floor at a speed of up to a half a meter per second. (Wicked fast for a spider, but slow for a human — 1.2 miles per hour.)

Also, they typically react to your freak-out by freaking out themselves, zipping under a spot where you don’t want to come upon them later, like under a slipper, or even worse, your bed.

Then the issue becomes what to do and who has to do it?

Is the plan to kill it? The problem with that plan is that giant house spiders eat other things that you typically don’t want in your home, explains Rod Crawford, who has studied, collected, and curated spiders at the Burke Museum in Seattle for 50 years.

“Spiders have to eat, and what they eat is household insects, and household insects can actually do various kinds of harm,” Crawford said. “Fleas, bedbugs, carpet beetles, clothes’ moths, cockroaches, a dozen stored food product pests, houseflies, mosquitos.”