Arachnophobes look away now; you're not going to enjoy this.
According to experts, Britain's home are about to be invaded by hairy spiders of up to 12cm in length, and there's apparently not a whole lot you can do about it.
Spiders are lurking about all year round, but usually they have little interest in entering your house. That changes as we enter the winter months, as males as big as mice start patrolling your living room floor.
The reason? They're really damn horny.
Yep, autumn is mating season for spiders, so most of the eight-legged critters you spot scuttling around will be newly matured males looking for a lady spider to get it on with. The females only really leave their webs to feed, but they can lay hundreds of eggs and in each egg sac there can be up to 60 'spiderlings'.
So how do you hit back against the giant spider orgy? You can't, unfortunately. Keeping windows and doors shut as much as possible will help to a degree, but spiders can crawl through the smallest of spaces.
"If you find them, it’s pretty much impossible to rid your house of them," Steve McGrail, from Pro-Kill Environmental, told
The Derbyshire Times.
"They may disappear for a period of time, but other spiders will come in their place. The best thing to do if you find them is put them in a shed – it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind."
Out of sight, out of mind. Sure.
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