And Anansi - my baby

Anansi is doing very well. She is SOOO fat right now! She also shows a black dot underneath on her rear end. So I'm hoping for another molt soon. I took several shots of her a couple of weeks ago, too. I had her posing with a quarter, too, but none of the shots with the quarter came out as well as this one.

See Anansi chowing in early December:

Brachypelma smithi ~ eating

She has continued to try to attack the water when I add water to her habitat. I also swapped her cages with Babs and gave her some bed-a-beast. I think she likes it. I gave her a full tube, too (short, but not cut down the center). She seems to like the tube a lot and has dug out some dirt on one end of it. She still has the half-tube, too and likes to stand on top of it.

Her belly is so fat that I'm afraid to feed her any more. Unfortunately, Special K has died and so there are fat juicy crickets in his cage with nowhere to go. Good thing they're cheap. I tell people they are the cheapest pets to keep (outside of Pet Rocks, perhaps).

Anyway, ain't she a beauty?! Thanks for lookin'.

Babs

I finally HAD to clean out her habitat. She had since made several new nests in which to hide. However, when I cleaned out her home, I did find an eggsac of some sort in the first one (as I had suspected). It was orange and very stiff. I don't really know what that means. I also moved her into Anansi's old cage. (I switched them.) She is as gorgeous as ever, but still a crummy model. She likes to hide all the time. In her new home, I gave her some bed-a-beast. I had SO much to spare and I figured it would also help with the whole cricket carcass thing.

Here is a photo I took of her a couple of weeks ago - right after changing out her home / dirt / and giving her crickets:

Phidippus audax
Bold Jumping Spider

She is fun to watch, but very difficult to catch for good photo ops.

Special K

A friend of mine had her boys catch a tarantula in their driveway for me. They brought it over right away (she doesn't like spiders). I named him (a fully mature Oklahoma Brown {Aphonopelma hentzi}) after the container they used. His name was Special K. (They used to use it to hold Special K cereal.) That was a while back (early October or before), but he has now passed. I honestly think he simply died of old age.

Aphonopelma hentzi
photo from a couple of weeks ago

I haven't gotten rid of the carcass yet, in case he is just molting. I learned my lesson with Bunny!

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Male tarantulas do not live long after reaching maturity.