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Meet the Spoods: part 1

Winnie has been spending a lot of time in her nest lately, I've not seen a lot of her. So I thought it was time to talk about something else: the Spoods.
As well as Winnie, I now have three tarantula spiderlings. I ordered these thinking that I was further along in my arachnophobia journey than I really am. I've actually been able to put my hand in Winnie's enclosure and attempt to handle her - she hates it. She must think I'm icky because whenever she's on my hand she jumps and flops about like a fish out of water. Maybe I'm too warm, or maybe I smell funny? Maybe I just don't have enough eyes, I don't know. But the point is, I have been trying, and I take this as a very good step forward. In fact, I thought this was such a great step forward that I thought I wanted and could handle more. So on that note, meet the Spoods:
The Spoods is my collective name for what is essentially Winnie's extended family. I have mentioned this before, but The Spider Shop have a great selection of tarantula "starter sets" available for people wanting to get into the hobby. (I am told that the actual hobby in question is collecting tarantulas as opposed to anything else...) The particular starter set I was drawn to was the "Deluxe My First Spiderlings" collection. For the reasonable price of £27, I got three spiders, water bowls, and bark hides,plus the substrate and a pipette for dispensing water. Apart from food, it's three spiders plus their homes, complete and ready to go. The up side is that it is great value for money, and all of the spiders contained are billed as beginner species, so should be relatively easy to keep. The down side is that spiderlings (or slings) have a high mortality rate. That's just nature and is the reason spiders lay so many eggs. Many spiderlings just "fail to thrive", so the trick is to keep them alive until they reach a juvenile stage.

The spiders I got in this particular set were the very typical Brachypelma hamorii, or Mexican red knee tarantula, the Brachypelma verdezi, or Mexican rose grey tarantula, and the Grammostola pulchripes, or Chaco golden knee tarantula.
B. hamorii
B. verdezi
G. pulchripes

Obviously, the Spoods are just slings right now, so they don't look like this yet, but I'm sure you'll agree they're all going to be very handsome Spoods in the long run.

Continued in part 2
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