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!

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.