Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

A bit of a light hearted giggle today... I am subscribed to the TSS weekly newsletter - there are still some species that I would like to add to my collection, and I would be gutted if they came in stock and I missed them. So I scan the newsletter each week to check the latest arrivals. And this week, I found....this: I mean, nothing screams "I'm a spider!!" harder than an orb weaver species. My sister has sent me photos and videos of species similar to these from her holidays in Florida, and I have literally thrown my phone across the room as a result. These are some of the most spidery looking spiders I've ever seen. They are not one that I feel like I could handle right now. But I have to admit, curiosity got the better of me, and I read the page for more information regarding the care of these monsters... Yes, you read that right - these fellas don't need a cage to live in. No. Just give it your conservatory! I don't think I would ever go into th...

A quick look at how I keep my enclosures. Currently, the enclosures are in my guest bedroom, stacked on a shelf against the wall. They used to be nicely spaced, with plenty of room around each enclosure for ventilation. As the critters have grown, they've been upgraded to larger enclosures taking up all of that spare space, so now I have next to no space to upgrade them should they grow any more. The plan for the future is to move all of the enclosures down into the living room, where I've been clearing a set of shelves for them. Long term, the plan is to have LED lighting for each shelf, and to run a heat mat along the back wall so that on cooler days, there is heat radiating from behind the enclosures. I want to make the Spoods a display/centrepiece for when people visit, (should they dar as most of my friends are arachnophobic themselves!) Here is the current set-up. My partner once commented that they look like spider skyscrapers with the way I have them stacked, so ...

I was recently asked to share pictures of my mantises rather than my spiders for a change (apparently my friends aren't as fond of the wee little beasties as I am, go figure!) I am always happy to oblige with pictures of my critters, regardless of what they are, so here are pictures of Sykes, Catchy, and Tyson. Unfortunately I lost Evander, my second flower mantis, recently. He went through a period of refusing to eat. No matter how many fruit flies I dropped into his enclosure, he just wasn't interested, and he passed right before I left for Amsterdam. I am obviously very disappointed, but this is nature and I tried my best. This is why mantises have so many babies - some of them just don't survive, it's called "failure to thrive". Sykes is my dead leaf mantis, Deroplatys desiccata . He's had two or three molts since I got him, but his rate of growth is so slow that I barely notice the difference at the moment. He's not much bigger than when I...

It is so hard to believe that three days have been and gone already. I just sent the most amazing three days in Amsterdam with my partner, and we didn't waste a minute of it. From the minute we woke up to the moment we went to bed, we were out and about, experiencing the sights, sounds, tastes and smells that Amsterdam had to offer. One of the things we did, on impulse, was decide to get tattoos. Matching tattoos at that. Initially we had decided we only wanted something small, something sort of secret, and we both agreed on a spider. Maybe a black widow? We visited a few parlours, but in the end it was the first one we had visited (naturally) that gave us the best vibes, so we went in there and explained what we wanted... He took our thoughts on board, and came out with this: And so now we are branded... Lol. We couldn't be happier, to be honest. It was a lot bigger than we initally wanted, but he charged us less than he initially quoted and it was done very quic...

A pointless post today, as I don't have a lot to report - I'm flying out tonight and everything is done. That said, while I was packing my stuff and getting ready to leave, I couldn't help but notice these little eyes watching me from over the edge of her hammock as if to say "Where are you going?" She is very cute.

Well, I can't unsee it now. Ziggy popped his head out of his hide (presumably hoping for a spot of lunch) so I snapped this photo of him: He looks so big compared to when I first got him a couple of months ago, so I must be doing something right. He's definitely one of my favourites, aesthetically, even if I wouldn't touch him with a ten foot barge pole. But...When I was looking at the photo a little later on, I couldn't help but notice a passing resemblance to a certain blue muppet.... Ziggy reminds me of Uncle Deadly.... I mean, there are definitely worse muppets he could resemble, and Uncle Deadly is one of my favourites. So I'm not complaining. But I definitely can't unsee it now...

Prior to my trip to Amsterdam, I've been doing regular checks on all of the critters - I check the Spoods regular anyway, but I'm now checking much more frequently to make sure that none of them needs anything while I'm away. A bit much? Maybe, but I'd rather this than come back to some ex-critters. In checking on Lucifer, I found that I couldn't find him. He didn't seem to be anywhere in his enclosure... until I looked a little closer and discovered him sitting on the bark hide at the bottom of his enclosure. Once you see him, you can't unsee him. It's obvious where he is. But at the time, I couldn't find him for anything.

This is the last of the feeding posts, as I have fed all of the critters who would take food. The jumpers are a little awkward to feed at the moment. They are a lot fussier with food than my others, who will eat anything so long as it's sized appropriately. The jumpers....well, they only really like green bottles. Unfortunately, I don't have any green bottles in stock at the moment. I have ordered some, but they take several days to arrive and then another week or so to emerge from their pupal stage. With me being about to head off for a few days, it's just not going to happen. But spiders still have to eat, and the regals are currently looking pretty hungry! With the flies I tend to just drop the pupae into the enclosure, then it hatches when it hatches and the spoods can hunt properly. As I don't have flies, I have to work with what I have, and what I have is meal worms. I can't release mealworms into the enclosures becuase the spiders like to be high up -...