This Brown Daddy-Long-Legs greeted me yesterday a.m. when I walked into my bathroom.Needless to say, I dried my hands at my husband's sink.
I'm not afraid of spiders so I watched this one most of the day. She (he?) stayed on the turquoise towel in this same position, and I didn't notice she had gone until late afternoon. They are nocturnal, I believe, so she may have been looking for someplace shadier to deposit her eggs. Oh, goody! More spiders coming! I believe they're good for us, eating flies, aphids, fleas, lice, and bedbugs (don't speculate--I don't have of those--well, maybe a fly now and then; I keep all the aphids outdoors and the fleas on the dogs. Lice and bedbugs are ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN!
Oh dear--it just occured to me that perhaps she was depositing her eggs on my turquoise towel! And I threw it into the laundry hamper last night so I may have washed those babies down the drain!
So it goes...
It's an urban legend that Daddy-Long-Legs (or Granddaddy Long Legs, as some call them) are poisonous. They do have a tiny venom sac, and they will bite (as recorded on the TV show "Myth Busters,") but not enough to harm anything larger than another spider.
The scientific name is Phalanguim opilio and they belong to the pholcidae family. The link above will give you more info than you probably want to know unless you're a biology major.
