Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Sorry guys! I don't know if anyone actually reads my spider blog, but I'm sure if you do you'll have noticed that it's on a temporary hiatus. There are posts queued up, waiting to be edited and finished. I have plenty to write about, including the recent loss of my elderly mantis Catchy, and the rehousing of my Poecilotheria metallica (which was tense). But right now it has to wait, as I am currently juggling my job, my fmaily, and now my new Masters degree in Environmental Management. I will come back and update on all the lovely (and not so lovely) things that my critters have been up to. But for now, I'm afraid it will have to wait. Be safe all, and don't squish that spider!

Unfortunately, due to the delayed nature of the posting on this blog, the things that I write about in the Summer don't get published until Winter, or vice versa. That's the limitation of a prolific poster writing up a buffer, to be released at regular intervals. It doesn't usually pose a problem, but as I write this post in the middle of Autumn - firstly, it is not going to hit the blog until next year. Secondly, due to the nature of the content here, it may interrupt continuity - I am writing to remember the charming little critters that I lost over this summer. Some of the deaths were expected, there had been plenty of warning. Other deaths were...surprising. But while I mention them here, due to the pre written nature of the content to come, there may be posts further down the line where these names and faces crop up again, almost as though I hadn't lost them. I've been umming and ahhing over the best time to place this post, and to be honest - there's...

This new spood finally has a name! It has taken me a while to get around to it, because I was really struggling. I am really hoping that this spider is a male, because the males of this species take on a really vibrant purple colour once they grow on, while the females are a dusty brown. So I wanted a male name, but also something linked to the colour purple, to highlight my hopes for him. All of the purple-themed names I could think of sounded really girly, like "Lavender", or "Heather". But then it occurred to me - Purple Rain. My partner really came up with it, not me. But he's named after a certain purple singer/songwriter - Prince. Yeah, it might be cliche, but I'm really happy with it. So Prince it is!

Happy New Year to you all from myself and the Spoods! We hope 2025 is a better one all round, for everyone.

Diablo's scorplings are now wandering about! They have been wandering around in the mouth of her burrow, completely free from mum. This means I took the chance to separate them as soon as I could. This is a photo of a scorpling from a few days ago - it is small, and very pale in colour. I'm not sure if it was even meant to be off her back this early, but it was: I waited a few days, and the scorplings started to change colour. They are now a darker brown - still not black like their mum, but darker than the pale cream one. I have counted them out - I now have an extra 15 scorplings - and put them into a communal tank where they can huddle together under some bark. I have fed them a couple of pre-killed locusts which they seemed to enjoy, and I spritz them every day. So far, so good. I still have 15 scorplings...

It's a feeding day. I know this because Ziggy is out and about. Ziggy is my elusive P. metallica . Like most metallicas, he is very shy, and very bolty - He will bolt back down into his tunnel at the slightest hint of movement from the outside. This is how I know when he is hungry - A hungry Ziggy doesn't bolt as easily. When I was feeding him today, I couldn't help but notice that he is finally coming into his adult colouring. He still has the juvie grey colouration on his carapace and abdomen, but his legs are starting to get the blue and yellow markings of an adult. It's really nice to see because an adult P. metallica is quite a beautiful sight. I'm quite excited to see that I'm getting to see it in my own home.

A very quick unscheduled post to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays from myself, the Spoods, and all the rest of the critters.

And so my decision to get my first mystery box has even more consequences.... Since Diablo arrived, she has reminded me time and time again why mystery boxes may not be the best of ideas. I had thought that now that she was rehoused into a 125 litre aquarium, she might be happy. I was happy thinking that I had done my best to make her happy, given that she was a wild caught animal. I felt guilty at the idea of her being pulled from her natural environment, shipped thousands of miles around the world, and dumped in a plastic tub in my front room. Since being moved into the larger housing, I had barely seen her as she had burrowed deep into the substrate. I took this to be a good thing, as previously she had been pacing her smaller enclosures, tapping on the glass. She certainly didn't seem content then, so now that her behaviour seemed calmer I thought that maybe she was content now. Well, it seems that she had a surprise up her many sleeves.... Just as a reminder, this is ...

Okay, okay. I admit it - I have a problem! But to be honest I really don't care... My partner and I stumbled across a local exotics shop by accident called Jay's Jungle. We initially went in there to see what selection of live foods they might have had, expecting them to be mainly reptiles. When I found that they had tarantulas in there as well (on a shelf high up because they were apparently scaring the customers away!) I had to have a look. They had a lot of the regular species, mainly Brachypelma>/i> and Grammastola species, but they also had several Venezuelan Sun Tigers, (Psalmopoeus irminia . So I went in there for food, and I came out with this: Venezuelan sun tigers are native to Venezuela and Brazil, which makes thema New World species. However, unlike most New World species they don't have urticating hairs, and so they rely on venom for self defense. This makes them more like an Old World species, so I plan on treating him as such. Because his dark ...

Less of a post and more of a random photo share - I was walking past Catchy's cage today, and she was looking at me in a peculiar manner, so I had to get a photograph: Not only did I find her posing interesting, but this photo shows a part of her anatomy that I'm very curious about - those shiny black bits in the segments of her abdomen. I've seen them several times before, but I never knew what they were. I've had a bit of a nose around Google since taking this photo, and apparently they're part of her threat display. Catchy has never displayed for me, so I don't know what her threat display looks like - the closest I can find online is this photo: Supposedly, they can inflate them to make themselves look bigger and scare off predators. Pretty cool!

Meet Skele-Ted. Skele-Ted is a pale ladybird spider, Stegodyphus dufouri . These spiders are related to the Black velvet spider that I would really like to add to my collection. They are an arboreal species that originates from the continent of Africa, so like warm dry enclosures with plenty of height. Unfortunately, when Skele-Ted arrived, it was very obvious that he was already a mature male due to the length of his first pair of front legs. Male individuals of this species (and indeed many others) have extra long front legs to help them to hold the females' fangs at bay as they attempt matine. This was a little disappointing as a mature male is likely to have a shorter life span than a female, but he is still an impressive specimen regardless. I named him Skele-Ted due to his cute little face. It made me think of a sad teddy bear, wearing a skull - A little bit like the Pokemon Cubone. I prefer to think that it's the skull of his enemy rather than his mother though! H...

My newest Jumping spider is now named Charlotte. Growing up I was an avid reader, and Charlotte's Web was an absolute favourite. Since I like to give my jumpers traditional English names, it was only a matter of time before I had a Charlotte. She is such a small spider though! Absolutely tiny, so I can't feed her in her enclosure yet. Like when I first got Winnie, I have to pull her out of her enclosure and put her in a smaller feeding tub so that she doesn't lose her food in the vast space of her home. Here she is being curious in her feeding tub: I have tried and tried to find a spider who was as curious about me and as engaged with me as Winnie was, and so far I have failed. Spiders are like any other animal and they all have their individual personalities. I think I might have finally got lucky with Charlotte. She watches me as I walk around her enclosure, cocking her head with curiosity. I haven't tried to handle her yet as she's too small and I don...

It feels as though I have only just got these critters, but the first spiny leaf insect has matured. It's hardly surprising. Since they arrived, these stick insects have decimated the raspberry plants that I grow in my garden. I am constantly clipping fresh leaves to put into their enclosure, and they have been molting quite often. The most recent molt for this one has resulted in a mature male stick insect. The easiest way to tell that it is mature is the presence of wings, as nymphs generally don't have wings, and a subadult insect can have at the most wing nubs. So this insect suddenly emerging from his molt with wings tells me he is mature. The presence of full length, fully functional wings tells me that this is a male. Female stick insects tend to be much larger than males, and only have vestigial wings that can't carry their bulky weight. This guy is long and skinny, indicating a male. Obviously, he is quite a bit larger than I was anticipating - most of the s...

Another short gratuitous photo post, which exists purely to showcase Wilma, with her cute eyes. I love how fluffy she is right now, and I definitely think that her markings look like eyebrows - she has a permanently surprised expression going on.

Summer is the time of fun, holidays, relaxing, and potentially bad decisions. Okay, by the time this post hits it won't be summer anymore, but maybe that's a good thing? An injection of silly fun during the cold dark months. I recently spent a week in Mallorca with my partner - sun, sea, sand, and lots and lots of Lumumba. Lumumba is a milky chocolate drink with a measure or three of brandy in it - we had it over ice, but it can also be drunk warm, which makes it ideal at any time of year. (Like now, when it's cold and dark - so go get some!) As is traditional when my partner and I go away, we found ourselves crossing Mallorca from Port de Pollensa to Palma to track down a tattoo studio. We had googled and decided to go to one called Sailor Tattoo, which seemed to be a traditional tattoo shop, had good reviews, and - maybe more importantly - was open. The last time we went away and did this we got matching spider tattoos. My partner didn't want a spider themed o...

Today is a sad day for Catchy. She went int' her final molt before I had been able to move her from her original enclosure into a larger one. I had known that she was getting too large for the arboreal acrylic enclosure she was in - she was outgrowing the mesh square in the roof of the tank - and I had bought her a new glass one with a larger mesh roof. Unfortunately, I have been so busy with work and catching up on missed items that I hadn't gotten around to moving her yet. Additionally, I had gotten a little lax in misting her tank as the weather got warmer. I would come home from work, eat-shower-sleep, and then leave in the morning to do it all over again. The follies of commuting via public transport. So why is this a problem? This has caused Catchy two main problems. The first can be seen in the photo above. Catchy did not have enough space on the mesh covering to stretch her freshly molted legs out while they were hardening. Her leg span was larger than the ava...

This is Loki. He is my Hapalopus formosus spiderling. These spiders - also known as pumpkin patch spiders - are a dwarf tarantula, growing to about two and a half inches across. When Loki came to me, he was about 0.5cm, and now...I'm not actually sure he's much more than that. About 1.0cm, maybe 1.5cm. He has molted multiple times, he just seems to grow slowly. When he arrived, he was the smallest spider I'd ever had: The enclosure he is in there - and indeed is still in - is a spiderling tub from The Spider Shop, and is 9 by 9 cm. It's a small one. He still hasn't grown enough for me to move him into anything larger, and I do think he will always be my smallest spider. However, he has done some growing, so when I checked in on him this week I decided to get him out and take a comparison photograph. In this picture you can see two things. The first is that he has his adult colouration and markings. Does this mean that he's no longer a spiderling? I...

No blurb, no chat. Just a happy Spood, sitting on his walnut, and my appalling attempt at macro photography. I'll be back next week with something a bit more substantial.

Since we have been playing musical tanks with the critters' enclosures, I thought it would be nice to give an update on Incy Wincy. He's had several months in the time that he's been with me, going from a scraggly little bald-ass spiderling to this lovely juvenile. He is a great spider to watch because - although he does spend a lot of time in his hide - he has stopped bolting away when I come to the enclosure, and he is always excavating his substrate. Like Big Spood, he is a budding architect. In this photo (which unfortunately has no gauge for size comparison) he is about the same size that my P. machala is now - maybe about 2 inches in legspan. His abdomen is bald due to kicking, and he is deperately due a molt: Well, this is him now. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear it wasn't the same tarantula. I haven't measured him, but I'd estimate his leg span to be about 5 inches across, which would make him about half of his adult size - salmon pi...

Just a short post today, to share a better picture of my new Purple Bloom tarantula, or Pamphobeteus sp. machalla. This spider doesn't have a name as yet, because I really want to call it something related to the colour purple, but I am hoping it will be a boy, and all those names sound decidedly feminine. For example, Violet. Or Lavender. A random name generator came up with Shadow, Cobweb or Webster. Well, I already have a Webster, and Cobweb was the name of my friends' little white cat. So I need some new ideas... I'm sure something will hit me. So, here is his ass, in all its naked glory. Seriously. This spider has a bald patch on its ass. A New World tarantula like this one will kick it's abdomen when it feels threatened or stressed to send a flurry of 'urticating' hairs into the air. These hairs are an irritant, both to skin and when inhaled. The result of this to the tarantula is that the hair on its abdomen disappears, leaving bald patches. ...