Ok, so I get up real early before work to do a little work on my layout before heading off to a 36 hour shift, I get myself a cup of coffee and let the dog out, I go to my layout under construction and began checking how my glueing looks from the night before.
I wanted to also double check my tracks that I laid down last night also, I take an open door box car off the shelf and place it on the tracks and give it a little shove to make sure that the track is level and the box car doesn’t roll back on me, just as the car is set in motion I notice a big furry spider come out of the door way and limb up on top of the roof of the moving box car, what the heck I thought to myself…“My first Hobo”…YUK!
I picked up the box car and he or she runs back into the opening so I slide the door closed and bring it outside and open the door but leave the box car outside.
I finish my coffee and then on the way out to work I check to see if my 8 legged friend has hopped another rail and sure enough he/she had, I hold the box car up and look inside to see a very thick web inside.
This was a box car that was mailed to me from a friend and I don’t know weither it came with the car or found this as a home while I’ve had it over the last 3 weeks, either way I’ve evicted him/her and will be cleaning up that box car when I return home.
Geesh, this got me to wondering if anyone here have ever had critters take over their cars, I’ve read a great post here about a problem with mice living in one of the posters tunnels but I never suspected a spider in my box car…erie!!!
Now I’ll have to check and then close all my box car doors because no one rides free on this guys Rails.
I was just letting one of my trains run in circles while doing some work last summer. There’s a spot on my layout where the track is really close to the edge. I was watching a big June bug fly around in the train room. Just when the train got to the spot close to the edge, the June bug dive bombed it and landed on the rails right in front of the oncoming train. The loco jumped it like a ramp and went off the side of the layout onto the concrete floor.
There were no survivors…
Forget it. Watch out for the brown recluses and other baaad spiders growing under the house in dark places. Once a year or so we chase what must be a couple the size of a coffee cup saucer.
Dont breathe that nice spring air too deeply around here neither. Might be some deadly gassing going on too. Spiders or humans, makes no difference.
Seeing how I started my first layout in my new unfinished basement I’m going to have prepare myself for rail hopping spiders and centipede’s this summer. Better keep those box cars doors closed and don’t reach into any tunnel’s without gassing first. LOL
This website has some good close up photos of various pests including Brown recluse and Black Widow spiders. The Brown Recluse does truly horrible things to flesh when it bites. it may not be fatal but it is bad.
Most of the spiders in my basement are of the more or less harmless variety and since they aren’t starving to death I generally let them be until they start to get too numerous or too close to the layout. At least they control the pillbug and millipede populations.
My new house doesn’t seem quite as bad for spiders as the old house was, but then here in MN we don’t get the really huge ones some of you are describing!! Every so often I’d find a cobweb being built between two buildings or between a building and a power line or something. Usually once a year I find a dead Junebug on the floor or somewhere; I assume it gets in the basement and can’t find anything to eat and dies.
I used to get birds that would come down the furnace chimney into the basement and would land on the layout knocking things over. One took a dump in an ore car one time, perhaps more “natural weathering” than I’d really care for.
I had wolf spiders in the basement for a couple of winters. They’re not dangerous, but those buggers are fuzzy and ugly and are frequently upwards of 2 inches long! Being hunters, they don’t make webs but aggressively pursue their prey, so you don’t notice them until one of them darts right past you on the floor! I’ll freely admit that they made me scream like a schoolgirl on more than one occasion, and even though the exterminator eradicated them last summer, one of my kids still won’t go in the basement.
I remember the “good ol days”, when one could pick up a container of Chloridane (spell?), spray around the area, and never see another bug (alive and well) for years and years!
Chloridane was used all over the country for bug eradication, but especially for termites - which are a very real problem here in the south. It was made illegal 20 years ago or so for obvious reasons. Note that Texas A&M began studies on Chloridane many years ago and found that (at my last checking), it was still “working” after almost 30 years of undisturbed application.
Ok so only for once a decade application, but seriously folks I think I am going to go root thru my grandfathers farm and see what pops up for bug eradication. Course in my case it might be useful to actually have a basement that is sealed. I don’t mind the spiders and the centipedes but it’s the grackles, sparrows and woodpeckers that get to me.
I got the draw on two spiders while I was slathering on the ground goop over a six week period. They are now encased, forever frozen in rictus, with ground goop. Never saw it coming. [:-,]
I kept a can of Hotshot spider spray handy, just once a month application during the worst parts of the year (spring-summer) and kept the buggers out of the garage.