Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

I love this picture of Big Spood. Big Spood is the largest of my spiders currently (Though I'm sure Incy will catch up quick!) so feeding is always a spectacle. Big Spood has a little dance that she does, which I call her "happy dance" whenever she gets a decent sized prey item. Unfortunately I've not yet been able to capture the dance - though I definitely will - so all I have to share are these photos. But oh my gosh, she looks so worried! Obviously, I know she's a spider and they don't exhibit emotions, but just look! Those look like some very concerned eyes! It amuses me to no end! Big Spood is fine though. I had just dropped a cricket into her enclosure, and she was coming out to see what was on the menu. She did catch the cricket - very quickly - but despite being ready with the camera, on this occasion I didn't see the happy dance. So have a photo of Big Spood standing over her food instead.... Her legs look pretty crooked, but I promise the...

Never am I more aware of the differences between mantises and spiders than during feeding time - feeding Catchy can be quite traumatic if you're an extremely empathetic person, or not used to how she feeds. It definitely opens up a whole host of questions regarding the ethics of keeping invertebrates as live foods for other pets. All of my invertebrates eat live food. That is their nature. And so I keep several sources of live food - usually fruit flies, green bottles, mealworms, and locusts. They all have enclosures, with hides, occasional spritzes for water, and fresh food. They're looked after as though they're my pets, but their ultimate fate is to be eaten by larger critters. My spiders kill their prey, albeit slowly, but injecting them with venom which paralyses them while their insides turn to mush. My scorpion at least does paralyse his prey, but he tears them apart whilst they're still alive and pre digests them on the floor. Catchy, unfortunately, just...

As part of my mission to feed all of the hungry spoods before Amsterdam, I threw a worm in to Ziggy this evening. I don't see Ziggy very often - he has dug himself a lovely series of tunnels under his bark hide, and for the most part he just sits in there. A bit strange, considering I thought he was an arboreal species, but I'm no expert in spider behaviour. But this means that if I see him out and about, then I know he's hungry. And tonight, he was out. Ziggy is one of my favourite spiders. I'm a little nervous of him, because he is very fast, and I know that if he bit me it would bloody well hurt - he's an Old World species of tarantula rather than a New World, which means that his primary defense mechanism (well, if running and hiding isn't an option) is venom. I really don't want him to bite me. But that said, I can't help but think he is a beautiful spider. His blue colouring is starting to develop, although it's not there yet, and I love...

Wilma has finally emerged from her molting web. She molted about a week ago, and kicked her little helmet out of her nest. Mostly she's just been sitting in her nest chilling since then, but I'm guessing she'd getting hungry, because she was out and about today. And look how fluffy she is! Honestly, she makes me think that she'd just escaped a session in the tumble dryer! Those little eyebrows are just too perfect!

I will be going away in a few days - a weekend break to Amsterdam with my partner. I'm not worried about the critters at all, as I plan on spritzing them before I leave, and then that's all they should need until I get back. The biggest task is making sure that whoever wants to eat has eaten before I leave, so that none of them are too hungry. This is more important for the smaller ones, the slings and the smaller mantises, etc, as I'm assuming that their metabolisms are faster and that they can't go as long between meals as the larger ones. This is a big assumption based on mammals, mind. I am trying to get some decent feeding photos in the process, so hopefully there will be plenty to post over the upcoming few days. Unfortunately, Catchy wasn't at all interested in food on this occasion. She's pretty well fed and growing nicely, so it's not a cause for concern. But I was able to get this photograph, and when compared to a photo taken four months ag...

There was a post floating around my Facebook feed over the weekend that asked a very simple question: "Are there any arachnophobes out there who have been helped by jumping spiders?" This got me to thinking about my own situation, and the answer is....yes. I was as arachnophobic as it was possible to be for 30 years prior to my mission to get over it. I would freak out when ever I saw a spider sometimes I'd scream, sometimes I'd freeze, other times I would throw things. I would hallucinate spiders when awake and have nightmares when I was asleep. Some examples of how ridiculous my phobia got include: - There was once a time when my sister sent me a Facebook video that included a spider coming out from under a cabinet - I threw my phone across the work lunch room, and my manager had to pick it up and cancel the video for me because it was on a loop. I couldn't face it. - Another time I was playing World of Warcraft with my eyes shut because there was a spider ...

So, Wilma just got through a major milestone with me - her first molt. Now, ordinarily this wouldn't be a major issue - my other spoods molt all the time. I'm not sure a week goes by where someone hasn't molted. But with Wilma I was especially nervous, as a molt was exactly how I lost Winnie. I'm not convinced that it was just molting that killed Winnie - I blame a husbandry mistake. I fed Winnie a waxworm as a treat. The waxworm was huge compared to Winnie but in the past she had dropped her prey when she got full. I couldn't get her to drop the waxworm. She held onto that thing like her life depended on it. In the end, she was massively bloated, definitely overfed, and I believe this triggered a premature molt. She had only molted a fortnight earlier, so definitely wasn't due to molt. When she molted, she had some sort of trouble, as she died very shortly after the molt. As such, I was very anxious about Wilma's first molt, even though I've...

I fed Catchy tonight. I am learning that she doesn't like worms, but prefers greenbottles. Unfortunately, she needs several green bottles to fill her up so I may need to look around for something larger soon. Fortunately, she only eats sporadically, so it's not a huge issue right now. This was Catchy when I first got her: And this is Catchy now! This is the exact same enclosure in the background, which I hope gives some indication of how much she's grown. She has only molted about 4 or 5 times, but she grows significantly each time. I do have other mantises - two Yunnan flower mantises and a dead leaf mantis. They are growing too, but not nearly at the rate that Catchy is. I absolutely adore looking at her - Especially when she looks at me back and the little black dots appear in her eyes looking almost like pupils. She definitely has character.