Spare a thought for the humble house spider, even if you’re an arachnophobe and terrified of the small ones, let alone the large, long-legged ones (a house spider can grow to a span of 10cm).

This article has been prompted by concerns that a very well-known retailer on Stand Street is selling spray cans of a product called Spider Killer.

We are taking up the matter directly with the retailer concerned, but there is clearly a demand for the product and we need to help educate people about why they should welcome spiders in their houses – not kill them.

Overcoming your fear of spiders may be easier said than done, but there are lots of reasons why you should take a deep breath and simply allow them to disappear back into the nooks and crannies, and to return where they came from.

Spraying them with Spider Killer or furniture polish, or sucking them into a vacuum cleaner, is very definitely not the right thing to do, but did you know that using the ‘beer glass and card’ technique and putting a house spider outside may also kill it?

Releasing a house spider into the cold is almost certainly a death sentence because they have adapted over the centuries to indoor conditions – a steady climate, specific food types, and sparse water supplies.

So, house spiders need to stay indoors, and if you leave them alone you’ll find that they perform an effective pest control service for you.

They kill and consume many types of insects, including:

Clothes moths and their lava (that may be about to ruin your most expensive coat or curtains)

Houseflies (that carry 41 human diseases which they will readily transmit to our food and to our kitchen worktops)

Fleas (that will make your life a misery if they live in your carpets, and keep re-infesting your pets).

A single spider may take hundreds of very small insects in just one day – a very welcome thing as summer approaches and the number of flies, in particular, increase.

If you’re a cat owner you’ll notice that, at this time of year, it takes a matter of minutes for uneaten cat food to be targeted by flies.

They waste no time laying their little white eggs in the food, and so try to feed only as much as your cat will eat in one sitting.

House spiders are not only good pest controllers but they are also completely harmless to humans.

They are not bloodsuckers and they are not interested in biting anything that is too large for them to eat, unless they perceive that their own life is at risk.

The Eratigena and Tegenaria species, to give the house spider its correct names, can live for up to three years.

They have venomous fangs with which to kill their prey, but even the largest spiders do not have jaws strong enough to pierce human skin.

At the very worst they may nip a human finger.

So, if you see a house spider and your first reaction is ‘get rid of it’, please think again.

Sometimes they actually need our help – if they fall into a bath tub or a kitchen sink, they can’t scale up the smooth sides, and so you should create a make-shift ladder out of some toilet paper or a tea towel.

Many people think that spiders climb up drains and put a plug into their bath or sink, but U-bends prevent this and it is much more likely that the spider had dropped down from above, in pursuit of water.

Being afraid of heights and spiders are the commonest of human phobias, but they are irrational and we need to find ways to cope with them – and Spider Killer shouldn’t be on anyone’s shopping list.