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Does Not Work for Brown Recluse

I waited a few months before writing my review on this product since it is very difficult to evaluate whether it is working. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is not.

We had an infestation of brown recluse spiders. I contacted a spider researcher at KU and brought him a specimen to verify this. I asked him about his opinion on the sonic devices and he said that he really doubted that they worked. Despite his opinion, I thought I would give them a try myself because they have received many positive reviews.

Since I had been capturing brown recluses to show to the spider researcher, I had one in a jar when we bought the sonic devices. Since they are supposed to repel spiders, I expected, if I put the spider in the jar close to the sonic device, the spider would react negatively somehow, such as crawling away from it. However, when I put the jar next to the activated sonic device, the spider did not react at all. It did nothing. I even tilted the jar so that the high-pitched sound would enter the jar. No effect. Despite this, I suspected that maybe the glass of the jar blocked the sound somehow. So I gave it a few more months.

We continued to have spiders in our house. However, there were less than usual. This could have been (and looking back probably was) because we had taken other measures for killing them. I hunted for and killed them every week. We also laid down tape for them to get stuck on, which captured a few. But I thought that the lower numbers might be because of the sonic devices, so I recommended some to my parents who also had brown recluse.

They bought some (though they were a different brand). But today, I just killed a brown recluse within 5 inches of one of my parent’s sonic devices. And my girlfriend just reminded me that about a month ago I killed one within about 2 feet of one of *our* sonic devices which are the brand mentioned above. So what this means is that at least some of these devices don’t work on brown recluse. And at worse, none of them work.

If you want to sucessfully survive brown recluse, here is how you do it (this advice comes from several spider experts who I have spoken to or read articles from since we first contracted this problem):

- Shake out your clothes and your towels before you use/wear them; most bites occur in unchecked clothing
- Kill every spider you see; as happened in our case, this will likely cause their numbers to dwindle
- If you own your home, seal up cracks that lead outside and to the inner walls
- Lay down duct tape sticky side up or buy the spider traps of the same design

Spiders do not respond to insecticides and in fact insecticides make it easier for brown recluse to find food. This is because the insecticides kill the insects. This makes them trivially easy for the brown recluse to find and devour. Unlike many spiders, brown recluse will eat almost anything, including dead bugs. And even if you eliminate all of the insects completely, brown recluse can go for months without food. Unless you seal your home and fill it with powerful nerve gases that kill any living creature (which has been done), you are wasting your money on insecticides.

Now my family has told me that the sonic devices are effective for mice. And other reviewers have said they work on things like roaches. But they do not work for the brown recluse spiders which plague the mid-west and they may not work on spiders in general.

If you have brown recluse, just be careful and kill them yourself. You will likely lower their numbers.

And don’t kill web spiders: they eat brown recluse (which don’t make webs). You can tell a brown recluse because unlike almost any spider, they have three eye pairs instead of eight eyes.

Update (2/6/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen.

The featured review for this product, Black & Decker EX410-2P-TP1 Ultrasonic Pest Repeller, Medium Room Lawn & Patio Aug 15, 2006, was written by Chris Redford.

The average rating for this item is 2.3 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.