Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Following Evander's untimely passing, I found myself with a spare arboreal enclosure. Rather than buy a new critter to fill it, I decided to move Lucifer the Evil - Satan's Featherleg - into it to give him a little bit more space. Previously, he was in a small "arboreal keeper" from The Spider Shop. While these are perfectly adequate enclosures, they are not my favourite as I don't like having to spritz the enclosure from the tiny hole in the top. I don't usually see Lucifer much. He buried himself in his substrate pretty much as soon as I put him into the Arboreal keeper, and I think I've only seen him twice since then, maybe only once. So imagine how happy I was when the day after I had moved him into the new enclosure, I found him out and about, stretching his legs. As you can see, while he is looking quite well fed (this can be seen by the size of his abdomen - small and shrivelled mean he is hungry, round and plump means well fed) he hasn't g...

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.

Lucifer is ALIVE! I had a vague inkling that he was, because he had kicked a moult out of his burrow not so long ago, but I hadn't actually seen *him* since putting him in the enclosure. Last night I went for a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip, and just out of curiosity I turned the spood light on. I was very pleased to discover that Lucifer was up and about, and feeding on a greenbottle that had hatched out in his enclosure a few days earlier. He is a lot smaller than I expected - he has only had one moult since coming home, but for some reason I had expected to see a more dramatic change. He is obviously slower growing than some of my other species (although this might be helped by him coming out to feed more often!) But I am just glad that he is alive, and I've actually seen him. Here is his butt. It was the best image I could get while he was feeding, unfortunately.

Not really a full post but a happy note - Lucifer the Evil has kicked a molt out of his burrow! Lucifer is my Feather leg baboon spider. He is the one I am most scared of because he is a species known for a very nasty bite - five days of excruciating pain, spasms, and muscle cramps. As such, I do very little poking around his enclosure. He gets fed, obviously, and misted daily. But I haven't poked around. So when the first thing he did on arrival was burrow into the ground and hide, I was somewhat frustrated. For six weeks, I have been throwing pre-killed meal worms into what effectively looks like an empty tank, and I can't be sure that he is eating them. So to see a molt having been evicted from his burrow is a success - it shows he is still alive, and hopefully thriving. It would be nice to see him at some point though...