September, 1999

September 27, 1999:
I finally ordered my tarantula today from the Spider Patch. After a great deal of consideration, I decided on the curly hair over a handful of other beginner species that I liked. The main reason was because it is a bit faster growing than the others. I also ordered a baby habitat rather than guess at what size I need. The guy said that he could give me a female with 80% certainty, which seems pretty good since the spiderlings only have a legspan of about 1.5 inches. The little guy should arrive tomorrow... I can't wait!

September 28, 1999:
Normally my mail arrives about 15-45 minutes after noon. Today it didn't show up until almost 3! The promised package arrived! The box was surprisingly large. Inside was the habitat under a few slabs of styrofoam and a bunch of packing peanuts. Inside the habitat was a bunch of shreaded newspaper, a bag of peat, a bag of vermiculite, a bag of sphagnum moss and a small film canister.

I mixed the peat and vermiculite together with some water (just enough so that it will be stable for burrowing), and packed that down in the bottom of the habitat. Unfortunately, it's not even an inch deep! I'll have to get some more tomorrow. I'd like to fill up the habitat about half way so that the spider can't fall to far and hurt herself and so that there will be room to burrow. I put some of the moss in one end of the cage and sprinkled the tiny moss crumbs over a wider area of the surface. For a water dish I used the lid from a perscription pill bottle with a sponge to prevent drownings.

Finally, with the habitat ready, I took the lid off the film canister and unraveled the paper towels just enough so that the spider can find her way out. It only took a few moments for the little spider to decide that her new home was nicer than the tube she just crawled out of. Slowly, she walked toward the front right corner of the cage. It didn't take long for her to make a few home improvements. She pushed the moss out of that corner and packed it down to create a little open space. She mashed down any remaining small pieces into the substrate.

It looks like she's healthy and intact - kudos to the Spider Patch for their excellent and prompt service! I'd definately recommend them and may order more spiders from them in the future. She may actually be a bit bigger than 1.5 inches.

I put a baby Madagascar hissing roach in the cage (catching it was a major challenge; I'm going to have to change around my roach cage to improve on that). I don't have enough roaches yet to feed the spider regularly on them, but I can spare one for now. I didn't see the spider catch it, but it was gone by the time I got home from work. Now that I think about it, it is quite probable that the roach escaped though the slats in the top of the cage, though at the time I put it in, it seemed content to hide under the moss (about an inch or two away from the spider). I've only seen the roaches climb the sides of cages when there were quite a few in a small container. The body of the spider is bigger than I imagined, and it would have had no trouble quickly taking down the baby roach. She seemed to be grooming her face for quite some time after I got home from work. She kept posing in her little cleared out corner and the other corner on the right side on top of the moss. I'm already baffled by her behavior... I'd better get used to it.

September 29, 1999:
I woke up this morning to find that my little friend had (not surprisingly) dug a hole to the bottom of the cage in one corner. She had piled up the removed dirt around the hole to form a little berm. She wasn't sitting in the hole at the time, but she started moving in that direction when she saw me.

On my way to work I picked up a bag of peat moss and a bag of vermiculite. I got the smallest bags I could find, but I will have TONS left over. I also got a scrap piece of 2" PVC tubing about 2" long that I cut lengthwise to create a better hide for the spider.

By the time I got home, some moss had been carefully arranged on top of the berm around the hole. The spider had "dug in" a little bit under the berm as well.

I had to remove the spider from the cage in order to update its housing, and the whole process made me very nervous because the spider was very resistant to the idea of moving in any direction. First I removed everything that needed to be removed except for the spider (the moss and water dish primarily). Then I slowly coaxed her into a perscription pill bottle. She really didn't want to leave her shallow burrow, and wanted to go into the bottle even less. After about 15 minutes of lightly brushing her legs and abdomen, she was in. Phew, the hard part was over, I thought.

I then filled the tank about 3 inches deep with the vermiculite/peat mix. I put in the half piece of PVC in the tank with one end (closer to the center) just about totally out of the ground, and the other end completely buried and pointed in the direction of the left side of the tank. I dug out some of the substrate from underneath the pipe, so it provides what I hope will be the location of a burrow. If she burrows forward a few inches, she'll hit the side of the tank and provide a little window. I put some moss over the pipe, sprinkled a few small bits around the tank and replaced the water dish.

I thought I'd just take the cap off the bottle and set it down sideways in the cage and let the spider crawl out on her own. After several hours of sitting in the bottle in the tank, she hadn't budged. I needed to get the bottle out and the lid secured before I went to bed, so more drastic measures were needed. I gently pulled out the paper towels that I used to pad the bottom of the bottle and out came the spider with it. She seemed a little mad at me for it, but I think I've managed to avoid injuring her. The whole activity made me quite nervous - she's so tiny and delicate; it seems like a tiny nervous twitch could easily injure, if not kill her. I have no experience, so I don't know how fragile spiderlings like that are. I'll probably gnaw my fingernails to the bone when she molts.

After being deposited in the new and improved environment, the spider moved very little, mostly staying in a scrunched up position. Later, after the lights were out for a while, she started moving around, and I was able to see that she was just fine. She didn't seem to be showing much interest in the new cave, and instead was more interested in examining the boundries of her domain. I hope she chooses the cave as her burrowing site. I'd feel pretty silly if she decided not to take advantage of it. I'm going to get some crickets soon and see how hungry she is.

Just before I went to bed, she managed to pose quite nicely on the side of the aquarium (pretending to be arboreal). I'm not sure as to what the offical method of measuring should be, but her body length is definately over an inch (about one and an eighth is my estimate). The diagonal leg span is definately over two inches (she was moving, so that kept changing). It might even be two and a half if she stretches out all the way. Since I don't know how to measure properly, I'll just use a safe underestimate of 2" for now. Yippie!

September 30, 1999
I woke up this morning to find my tarantula was making her house into a home. I saw was a big pile of dirt covering nearly completely the opening to the PVC cave. I took a quick look at it every time I walked by, and it looked like more dirt was being shoved out (though I never saw it happening). I think my spider has some sort psychic power to detect when I'm looking at it. I hardly ever see it move, yet when I'm not looking, the cage gets rearranged.

I misted the cage last night, and in one part of the cage, only half the droplets on the plastic had evaporated. My apartment cooled down considerably last night, and quite a bit of condensation formed inside the cage (only next to the substrate though, not above it). I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep the cage humid enough, but now I think it might be too humid. I'm not going to mist the cage for a few days until it seems a bit more appropriate.

After work, I got 2 bucks worth of crickets at the pet store. Now, looking at how many I got, I think I'll have quite a few get too big before they get eaten. I put one in the cage, but it sorta just ran off to the corner away from the burrow. So I decided to adjust the dirt pile enough so that I could drop a cricket right into the burrow. When I did, the cricket crawled in, but after about a minute, it crawled back out again. The two crickets have tried several times now to climb up the dirt mound and have failed. Also, the rest of the crickets have demonstrated that they aren't the master climbers that tarantulas and cockroaches are. The spider will have to come out and get the two crickets if she's hungry. If she hasn't eaten them by tomorrow afternoon, I'll take them out and try again later this weekend.

At the pet store, I saw a tarantula labeled "Rose Hair" which looked correct... It had a legspan of probably 4 inches, perhaps more. The part that makes this noteworthy is that it was only $9.99... Am I crazy or is that an outstanding price? It looked healthy, and was a relatively new addition to the store, because last time I was in, the tarantula they had was a slightly smaller pinktoe with a more appropriate price.

Update: About an hour after I put those first two crickets in, I looked at the cage, and they were nowhere to be found. At first I figured they probably had been eaten, but there was a chance they were hiding. I think even the tiny crickets are too fat to escape through the top of the cage, not to mention that they seem to be lousy climbers. I put another cricket in the cage, and again, a little later when I looked at the cage, it was gone. I grabbed one exceptionally tiny cricket and stuck it in the cage. This one could have jumped out before I latched the top, but it would have been a pretty high and accurate jump for a cricket that size (slim chance). I only turned my back for a minute or two, and I could no longer see it in the cage. I assume she got that one too.

I decided it would be safe to try one more cricket and see what happens. I dropped in another about the same size as the first two. I watched it for a few minutes as it wandered around the perimeter of the enclosure. I decided that it probably wasn't going to be eaten right away, especially with me watching. So I turned down the lights and went and left it alone for awhile. I looked at the cage about half an hour later and saw, in addition to a cricket wandering aimlessly about the cage, the spider's front legs sticking out of the burrow. I pulled up a chair and tried to sit as quietly as possible. After about 10 minutes, my patience was rewarded. The cricket made the fatal error of trying to climb the side of the dirt mound in front of the burrow. The spider took notice and took a few steps toward the cricket. The cricket, totally unaware of its imminent demise, continued to struggle to climb the mound. The spider then suddenly ran at the cricket and swiftly pinned it with it's foremost legs and pedipalps. A second or two later, she sank in her fangs and darted back into her cave to enjoy her meal in private. Wow, that was worth the 9 bucks she cost me right there! I proceeded to watch two more crickets meet a similar fate (including one that was about a third larger than the others) before calling it a night. By the time she got to the last one, her abdomen had grown to the point that the tiny entrance to the burrow had become a much tighter squeeze. I imagine that she might even open that up a little bit tonight.

It was interesting to see how she used the dirt mound for a trap. Its steep slope and loose surface immobilized the crickets when they got close to the burrow. That gives her a little more time to make her move. I was going to give her a name relating to her earth moving skills, but I think I'll call her "Ambush".

She's eaten 6 or 7 of the little buggers now, and shows no signs of stopping. I have yet to see any cricket boogers around the cage, so I hope she doesn't leave them in her burrow. That would stink in multiple ways. I'm holding off on feeding her any more tonight... I've heard that you can't overfeed a tarantula (they'll stop eating before that happens), but I'd like to save some of the show for others to see. With the way she's attacking the crickets now, she'll probably still be willing to down a few more tomorrow. I'll try putting in two little ones and to see if she'll try to tackle them both at once or devour one and come back for the other later.

I hope I'm caring for the crickets properly... I don't have any cricket chow, so I put a few pieces of dry dog food in their container. I've seen a few nibbling on it, so I guess they'll eat it. It might be a good gut-loading food as well. I put some cotton and water in a bottle top, but I think it is too high for them to climb on to. The first container I put them in had a couple of droplets of water in it from washing it out and I had a few apparent drowings. These crickets aren't terribly bright but they're a pain in the butt to capture. I may get a tall rubbermaid container to keep them in, and attempt to breed them. They're so cheap though, it hardly seems worth it.

Copyright ©1999-2008 Thomas Schumm