Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Tyson gave me a surprise this evening. Please note that I still don't know what sex Tyson is - I originally suspected female, but now I'm not sure. For the purposes of this post I will refer to Tyson as a "he", as his name is masculine. I may update his gender in later posts. Tyson is one of my two smaller mantises - a Yunnan flower mantis. He's just over an inch long, with an olive green and white body, and lovely purple eyes. I always knew that he was going to be smaller than Catchy, but I have to confess, I thought he'd get bigger than he has done. I have been waiting on a delivery of fruit flies for my smaller critters and they finally arrived today, so I was going from tank to tank, spritzing the smaller cages and then dropping some fruit flies in for them. I don't have many critters that still need fruitflies - the two smaller mantises, Loki my dwarf tarantula sling, and Pratt my curly hair sling. The two slings are about a centimeter across, ...

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...

So this is the last livestock purchase that I will be making for a while. I know I have said that before, but I have now reached my physical limit of what I can house and care for. In my room, I currently have: - 11 tarantula enclosures - four arboreal tubes, four sling boxes, and three 1.3 litre braplast tubs. As well as these I have: - two jumping spiders in medium acrylic arboreal tanks, - one mantis in a medium arboreal tank, - one mantis in a small deli cup, - one scorpion in a large faunarium, - a mealworm farm in an XL faunarium, - dubia roaches in a medium faunarium, and - one Sunny stick insect in a medium mesh terrarium. I also keep greenbottles, brown crickets, and fruit flies in their respective containers. My order today adds two Spotted fire millipedes ( Centrolobus splendidus ), a giant dead leaf mantis ( Deroplatys desiccata ), and a second mystery box! Centrolobus splendidus Yeah, I have no reason for ordering these other than I wanted them. I used to keep...

Tyson. Tyson, Tyson, Tyson.... I love this little mantis - he is full of personality, he loves to eat, he loves to come out and be handled. I especially love that after I named him Tyson for his little boxing gloves, I discovered that he also likes to nibble me! So he boxes and he bites, and I love that he is just living up to his name in every way. Here he is giving my finger a little nibble. He likes to walk up my finger, nibbling as he goes. He is so small right now that I don't even feel it, but I do think it's incredibly cute. He moulted this week, for the first time since he got here. When Catchy molts, she looks significantly bigger each time, but that's not the case with Tyson. Maybe Tyson is just a slower growing species, but I didn't even realise he had moulted until I saw his shed skin lying on the floor. And since we're talking about mantids, I thought we might focus on Catchy for a little bit. Catchy is definitely a favourite invertebrate of m...

My flower mantis has a name! I took a photo of him on my hand (after a particularly large lunch) and he looked about ready to punch me in the face. So his name is Tyson, after the famous boxer. And let's face it - if you're a bug, he's just as likely to bite you too! So here are Tyson, and Catchy, who seems to have tripled in size.

Wow. I am a very happy spood keeper. I have got home, and transferred all of my spoods into their new homes. Because of sizing, I did not have enough Braplast tubs to rehouse all of the original spoods, so Shelob remains unhoused. But as she is the smallest of the three, she can wait another molt or so. Heterometrus laoticus We might as well start with the biggest surprise. This was a difficult critter to transfer. I was unprepared for a scorpion - I don't keep scorpions at all, and nothing I own has gotten big enough for me to have spare enclosures hanging around or anything, so I had to use what was available to me and borrow an enclosure from work. It's not really suitable - it doesn't have cross ventilation and it's not wide enough - but I have since ordered a glass terrarium from TSS and he will be rehoused again once it arrived. Fortunately, I had enough cork bark and substrate hanging around that I was able to throw a house together, and I can refine it later on....

I got my replacement female jumping spider today, Phidippus regius . I haven't opened the tube yet to let her out as I am still at work. As such, she doesn't even have a name as yet because I wanted to see her before I named her. Her theoretical name at the moment is Winona - Close enough to Winnie that I still feel that I have my Winnie, but different enough to not be a direct replacement. And obviously, a play on Winona Ryder (Winona Spider). I have also received my Caribena versicolor (also still in it's tube), three braplast tubs to rehouse my original Spood trio (photos to come), and another arboreal sling keeper. All exactly as I expected, no issues here. But.... I also received my first mystery box. I've never ordered a mystery box before, and common sense ought to have deterred me, as a novice. But I was bored, and the devil makes work for idle hands.... So I ordered a £30 mystery box from The Spider Shop. And, well. I don't regret it, that'...