How to find vanished medium-sized spider?

Question

So, we had unwanted visit of a spider yesterday. It seems to be a non-adult version of a Tegenaria domestica or similar (trigger warning: pictures in the article). The size was about 3-4cm in diameter, including legs. To my knowledge, it doesn’t do a lot of webs and it is rather fast moving. It needs to go because one of us is suffering from arachnophobia, and ideally it goes in a controlled way and not by re-appearing out of nowhere and grown up or in a bad moment.

The spider was seen vanishing behind a cardboard box. Then it was left unattended for a while (which was arguably not smart, but yeah). The cardboard box was investigated later and the spider couldn’t be found there or in nearby corners. So it has vanished somewhere in the kitchen (or possibly even other rooms), which is a bad situation to be in.

So we tried to set up a "trap" by making an extra-dark corner close to the window, which hasn’t yielded any success yet. Since it’s the kitchen, there are quite a few appliances which we can’t even move. Ideally, there would be a way to force it out of potential hiding places and into some kind of trap (or even a well-reachable corner).

We would like to avoid having to call in pest control for various reasons, so a life hack is needed!

Answer 1

Sticky fly-paper is safe and effective. You might try leaving tape sticky-side up, though it might not be "soft" enough to trap a spider.

That said, these spiders are considered harmless (though startlingly large) and are beneficial in that they eat insects in the house. When I've found them inside, they are easily captured in a glass or plastic container and set free outside.