By Kelly Vowels
In celebration of Halloween, many people decorate their homes with spiders and cobwebs to scare little children and some adults, but spiders are not something you should be afraid of. Most spider species are not poisonous and are excellent insect predators: even better than birds. They remove many pesky insects from people’s yards and homes.
The black-and-yellow garden spider and other spider species create webs in people’s gardens and eat mosquitoes, flies, beetles, moths, and many other insects. By keeping them near your home, it allows for great free insect control without having to use pesticides. There are at least 4000 species of spiders in the United States, and fall is a great time to find and study them. So the next time you walk through a spider web, take a moment and look at the small beautiful spider that created that web. There’s nothing to be afraid of.