Spiders

Spiders are the most misunderstood pest we treat: they're predators, and their presence maps directly to their food supply. A home with webby eaves is a home with a healthy flying-insect population — porch lights, coastal humidity, and gardens all feed the buffet. New England's common house spiders (orb weavers outside, cobweb and cellar spiders inside, wolf spiders hunting at floor level) are essentially harmless to people. The problem is aesthetic and relentless: each egg sac holds dozens to hundreds of spiderlings, so this year's webs are next year's population.

Worth knowing

• Cape Cod and Connecticut have no established brown recluse population — the scary internet spider is almost never what you found in the tub.
• Spraying a web accomplishes nothing if the egg sac survives; sacs are weatherproof and overwinter in shakes and trim.
• Reducing exterior lighting (or switching to yellow-spectrum bulbs) measurably reduces web-building — fewer insects, fewer spiders.