RC Tarantula & A Book

Have you seen this thing?! It is a remote control tarantula! It calls it realistic, but also says the eyes light up red... and what species does that?! Still... I want one! lol

Holy cow, and look at this book!! Very cool!

Long Time No Update

I recently expanded my spider family. I was at the PetCo to see what they had. I can't get the guy at e-Spiderworld to return my calls or reply to my emails. I feel like some kind of stalker, but I've been a good customer... I just prefer to purchase my spiders in person and carry them home rather than having them shipped.

So I was at PetCo... hoping to find an arboreal species... even though I prefer not to purchase from a pet store. They only had one tarantula... a Grammostola rosea (Chilean Rose Hair). I guess I had the new pet itch, because I just had to have it. The guy working really didn't like the spiders, so he was happy to let me get her out of the aquarium myself. He brought me this little cardboard box and I looked at him like he was crazy. I bought a kritter keeper (only by some other company) and put it directly into it. Off the top of my head, I can't recall if it's a boy or a girl and now it is hiding. This was a month ago or so. My life got real chaotic... so I finally named it the other day - Chaos. I put in one of those log things and Chaos liked to hang out on top of it... I guess now got more used to it because Chaos is hiding IN it and even dug some extra dirt out from under it.

Now a concern - the end of the log close to the plastic of the habitat has some furry green spots on it. I'm going to post to a spider community to see if this is cause for concern or no big deal. I don't like to have mold around... but Chaos really likes this log!

New Resident & Recent Meal

I recently discovered a good sized bold jumping spider living in my minivan. It's the little things in life that make a person happy. heh

The last time I fed Anansi I dumped 6 medium crickets into her container. She snagged one very soon and then I left. When I got back home, she had them all in a pile under her and was covering them with a little bit of webbing. It was very cool.

Post-molt Pics!

I finally got shots of Anansi last night. She was out posing for me and everything!

Brachypelma smithi

Here is the amazing thing, look at this photo from February of last year! The coloring in the photo isn't great anyway, but still - you can see how much she has changed.

Brachypelma smithi

No appetite - Molting

I recently gave a few crickets to Anansi. They hid from her pretty well, but she also showed no interest in them. The next morning I took them out. I also held her recently. She was well-behaved, though the light was all wrong and I didn't get any good photos. I got some slightly reddish, blurry photos of her on my hand.

This morning, she's finally molting! I peeked in on her and she's hiding in her half-tube (as opposed to the whole tube). She's been hiding out in there a lot lately. Only now... she's on her back! I can't see her very well, but I did see her move a leg, so there's that confirmation that she's really alive (and she's not curled up like a dead spider anyway). I can hardly wait to see the new, brighter, bigger Anansi, but I wish I could see her better now. It is tempting to remove the tube from over her so I can watch, but I would feel awful for doing so. She chose to molt in there - probably because it IS inside, hidden... it's dark and confined, etc.

I've had her for almost a year now (as of the end of this month)! My best friend took me to OKC for birthday lunch and to get her last year. We've talked about maybe going back this year. That would be very cool.

I guess that's it for spider news right now. Babs is doing fine. I'll surely post again sometime after Anansi has completed her molt. I can't wait to see her!