I've been finding these crawling around the downstairs of the house that I am renting. I'd like to let the owner know if in fact they are destructive. They are approximately 2cm in length. Any idea what they are?


On an related note, maybe it's because I've started looking for these worms but I'm amazed at the number of spiders that I'm finding. A co-worker from the Netherlands said that it is the time of year for them. Is this a Europe thing? In all the places that I've lived, I don't remember Autumn as being spider time.

Looks like left over cat 5 cable waste to me.
I once went to a lecture on spiders, given by the father of a friend of mine, a world renowned expert, who told us that the average house has more than 100 spiders at any one time, I don't know whether he meant, in the UK or worldwide.

That looks vaguely like what I might call a "wood worm". If it is, you should also be finding tiny little piles of wood dust here and there.. But I'm no expert.

Here where I live, Autumn is definitely spider-time -- they're trying to get inside now that it is colder outside.

Cheers

I don't mind the spiders, since they eat everything else I DO mind, and give the cat something to play with as well There certainly are a lot of them around at the moment, though.

pca

I do believe you are correct. It's been raining here the past week so we haven't been outside much. Tonight we ate out on the patio. This is what we found.



SWMBO's taping the patio doors shut now and making all sorts of great noises.

So far we've seen snails, slugs, hobo spiders, and now, catepillars. It'll definitely make you itch.

Slugs

Snails

Quote:
They are approximately 2cm in length.

A metric inchworm?

If you were in the US, I'd say capture one and take it to the local Ag Extension Service, but what would that be there?

Spiders



I didn't get a picture of the hobo spider as I was rapidly going the other way when it was heading behind the refrigerator. Bloody thing was as big as my palm.

Yup that sounds about right by my count.

No, no wood dust although there are old wormholes in the staircase but we haven't seen any beetles or small worms that would indicate wood borers. I'm guessing that they're coming from outside and are just some catepillars as mdavey suggested. Now I know what's eating the last of my tomato plant. They don't seem to like the pepper plants though (jalapenos, seranos, and thais).

It reminds me of the gypsy moth catepillars that we had when I lived in PA. We had to use brooms to sweep them out of the rain gutters. Gave me the jibblies.

Update: Spiders don't seem to like them either. I dropped a catepillar in one of their webs. The spider tried wrapping it for 2 minutes. The catepillar just turned to jelly and the spider cut it out of its web.

No clue but if I take one to work, I'm sure someone will tell me how to cook them though.

I was commenting in the spider thread that I've seen way more spiders this year than others, and I always see more in the fall, so this fall has been crazy. I can't walk down the driveway in the morning without getting a web strand or two on me. That's the only time they bother me. I hate getting spider webs on me.

The slugs here really love(d) our pepper plants (various, including habaneros.

Great photos, especially of the slugs! Pretty fancy variant, those black ones you've got over there!

Cheers

Snakes!


This one happened to be dead but you would not wanted to have stepped on him in life.