CLOSED: Many of these spiders in my home - ID please?

I live in a very wooded area in the country (Lyndonville, NY) and we have always had a lot of spiders inside and out but these ones are rather large (almost an inch long), they move very fast and they seem to be showing up more and more in my house. This morning I found 2 of them in a bathtub, in our downstairs bathroom; which, doesn't get used much. They seemed to be unable to get out of the tub. They weren't bothered by me taking many pix of them, maybe because they were stuck.
I always thought that they were black but upon closer inspection, you can see that they are brown.
Can you help me ID it and also tell me the best way to get them out of the house?
Thanks
-Paul

This is a wolf spider (family Lycosidae), a very large and widespread group of spiders. They are active hunters with good (for spiders) eyesight, and often wander indoors in search for prey. When we find them indoors, I usually try to 'shoo' them into a container (such as a glass jar) with a piece of stiff paper, or carefully pick them up using a handkerchief or tissue, then release them outdoors. If you pick one up, use care - larger specimens can give a painful (but otherwise harmless) bite if mishandled.

Doesn't their venom cause necrosis? Or is that only the Australian variety of Wolf Spider?

This is the one I had in my basement. It IS a Wolf Spider, right?

The second spider is not a wolf spider, it is a male grass/funnel web spider (family Agelenidae) - note the prominent spinnerets at the end of its abdomen. Some species in this family also will wander about quite a bit, especially males in search of potential mates. As far as I know, no wolf spiders have venom dangerous to humans, and none that I know of (Australian included) have been implicated in any necrotic anachridism. See http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:15214620 for an article on bites by Australian wolf spiders.
There is one species of agelenid spider (not yours) in the Pacific Northwest that has been suspected as a cause of necrotic lesions, but the jury still appears to be out on this.

Well, it's a relief to know mine is NOT a Wolf Spider. Thank you.

Normally, I don't like to change a post once it has been made. I like to think of online conversations like their non-virtual counterpart, and you can't edit/erase what you say in real life. That said, I have decided to change this post for one very important reason, that being that I don't want to propagate false information on the web.

In this post I had previously made a very innocent but erroneous statement regarding the wolf spider. Thankfully, someone contacted me to question my comment. Upon doing the research I learned that I was wrong. What's worse, while googling for the correct information I found that my erroneous words popped up among the 1st 3 items in google. This latter fact is why I decided to edit my post to remove the incorrect assertion altogether, knowing that if I just made a 2nd post to correct my error, the incorrect information would still show up in google searches where it might misinform those who did not take time to follow the link and read all of the information.

This message was edited Oct 22, 2008 11:50 PM

This message was edited Oct 22, 2008 11:52 PM

Everyone,

Please accept my apology as I have learned that my prior statement regarding the wolf spider was incorrect. It was, in fact, the hobo spider that was featured in the article in discover magazine. I have corrected the information above.