Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

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...

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.

And I've done it again... I keep saying I've got enough critters, but then I put in another order - I just can't help myself! A lot of it is because of my "wishlist", which I have shared several times on this blog. As a regular customer of The Spider Shop , I am signed up to their newsletter so that I can see what they have coming in, when they get it. Currently I am most interested in the T. seladonia Brazilian jewel dwarf tarantula - an absolutely gorgeous arboreal trapdoor tarantula with a pink and blue sheen to it's abdomen, but which costs about £90 for a 0.5cm spiderling, and can often fail to thrive in captivity if it fails to build a trapdoor. As such, it's a risky purchase that I talk myself out of every time they come in stock, and they are never in stock for very long. This week, however, a spider came along which I was very interested in - Pamphobeteus sp. machalla . A terrestrial tarantula from South America, these spiders are orange wi...

I have been thinking for a while that I would like to rehouse my jumping spiders, and there are several reasons for this. Firstly - The tanks need cleaning, and badly. I have to remove the spiders from their enclosures, as the plastic sides are getting very difficult to see through. Firstly, they are covered with water marks from my spritzing the spiders regularly to hydrate them and keep the humidity up. I live in a very hard water area, and up until recently I have been using tap water in my spritzer. The end result is a collection of enclosures which have very misty, dusty walls due to limescale marks. I have recently made the switch from tap water to distilled water - which I buy online - so this should be less of a problem going forward. To further add to the grime on the sides - and this does seem to be specifically a jumping spider trait - they are also covered in poop. My jumping spiders seem to enjoy nothing more than turning around and sending a high velocity projecti...

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.

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 -...

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!

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...

Fred, the Spooder prince is doing very well. Once I worked out that he was a fussy eater and only ate green bottles, he started thriving. He still hasn't built himself a molting hammock yet, and I'm starting to wonder if he ever will - it may be that he is a mature male already (although he seems a little small for that). At the moment I've taken to putting a caster into his food bowl as soon as they arrive, so that as soon as it hatches he can be on the prowl. He seems to like that. But he is exploring well, eating well, and getting used to being handled - although that really depends on what mood you catch him in. Like Wilma, he likes to disappear up my sleeves. I have bought him some additional decorations for his little house - A coffin to serve as a hide, and some resin skulls which I scattered around his enclosure to match his castle. I guess he is now the Spooder Prince of Darkness? I was able to get these cute little skulls from Etsy shop The Spooder Corner . ...

Look how fluffy she is!!! I've never seen a spider quite as fluffy as Wilma. Hairy, yes. But Wilma looks like a little dust bunnie, she's absolutely adorable. I am going to have to keep a very close eye on this one though, because she LOVES food. In one week, she ate 3 fruit flies and 2 green bottles, and then caught a third green bottle that had accidentally ended up in her enclosure when (presumably) the caster got mixed up in her substrate and not noticed. There hasn't been a single prey item that she has let pass her by. So I will have to watch her very closely to prevent over feeding and the same issues that faced Winnie. In this photo, she actually has THREE fruitflies in her fangs at once. She tried to catch a fourth, but it got away. Now that she is settled into her enclosure, her personality is coming out. She loves to eat, loves to explore, and she panics a lot less than Winnie did when she is handled. In fact, she likes to explore my hand, has tried to ...

My new jumping spider has been home for a few days now. She is a very shy little thing, not nearly as curious as Winnie was, but I am hoping that will come with time. She molted in transit, so I have mostly left her alone to adjust as I didn't want to stress her out too much. She is currently smaller than Winnie was - I don't think I remembered how small Winnie was when she arrived, so I wasn't expecting it - but she is cute. She has the same magenta chelicerae as Winnie did, though her colouring is a slightly different shade - brighter. As she has been home a while, I have determined that Winona didn't seem to fit her after all. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was too close to Winnie, maybe I didn't like the fact that it would inevitably be shortened to Winnie. But she has since been named Wilma - so now my jumping spiders are Fred and Wilma. Cheesy? Maybe. But I like it.

This spider keeping malarkey is getting addictive. I'm really starting to think I have a problem. I currently own one mantis, one jumping spider, nine tarantulas, and by proxy, four stick insects. I have just ordered more . A few days ago I was lying in bed feeling very sorry for myself. I had been ill with a lurgy - nothing serious, but ill nevertheless. My daughter came into my room, and we chatted for a while before she looked at me with big, sad, blue eyes and told me "I miss Winnie. When can we get a new spider like her?" And damn, I am such a soft touch when it comes to my daughter! So.... long story short, I have ordered another Phidippus regius female to be delivered next week. But as I was putting in the order and paying the £10 delivery anyway, I also checked off one of my wishlist - Caribena versicolor . The Spider Shop had a very good deal on the sling plus enclosure for £20, and I couldn't resist. My daughter keeps asking for a "black and pink"...

Believe it or not, there are still Spoods that I would like to add to my collection. Yes, I am aware that I have a lot, and yes, I am aware that there is no hurry, and yes, I do know that I don't "gotta cetch 'em all". And to be honest, at this point, I probably won't get any more until Lolth, Shelob and Anansi have molted a couple more times and been moved into the next size of enclosure - a braplast tub. But! That isn't set in stone, mind you. If The Spider Shop get any of my "bucket" spiders in stock, then I might be swayed. Or if I suddenly come into enough money to afford some of the more expensive ones... So, in lieu of an actual post, here is my current wishlist: Caribena versicolor , the Martinique pink toe tarantula. When I first saw this spider, I was convinced it was photoshopped. Even now, I can't quite believe that a single spider can come in so many vibrant, clearly defined, different colours. It's beautiful. But it ...

I found these photo's on my phone while I was browsing, and she was SO cute, so I decided to post them here. I love the one of her that looks like shes's tapping on the glass. Poor baby. :(

The Spooder Prince has finally eaten something!! After everything I've tried, from moving him to smaller enclosures, to smushing mealworm guts near his fangs, and dangling flies in front of his face in tweezers.... in the end, I released a green bottle fly into his main enclosure, and when I came to bed I found him sitting in bed (his nest) eating the fly! It was so simple, and I'm so happy. I do feel a little bit like it was a pride thing - "I'll catch up own food, thankyou very much" - but I'm just happy that after a month, he finally has something . And a pretty decent sized something, too.

I got a surprise today. I have been home sick from work as I got Freshers flu (can you call it freshers flu in January?) Whilst I was in bed, I could hear a buzzing, as if a bee had gotten trapped in my room. I couldn't find the source for love nor money... until I looked to the Spood shelf. The green bottle casters that I had written off as dead had finally hatched. I'm not sure what had taken so long, but suddenly I find myself with a box full of hungry green bottles. Since hatching, the green bottles have been given a healthy meal of chicken, and some of them have been unfortunate enough to find their way into my enclosures. Catchy thoroughly enjoyed having the chance to properly hunt larger prey, Joy immediately leapt on the fly with all the ferocity of a starving Spood, and even Poe came out for a munch. I haven't seen him since he arrived, so that was a real treat. There was one Spood who wasn't interested in the flies though. The spood who I had initially bought ...

The Spooder Prince is giving me cause for concern. Much like Winnie when she first arrived, he is not eating. He hasn't eaten since he arrived about three weeks ago. He's definitely active enough, wandering around his enclosure, and being mostly happy to be handled, but no matter what I do he just won't eat. The first thing I tried was moving him into a smaller container so that he didn't lose his prey in the enclosure - after all, that worked for Winnie. But he just sits there looking at it. Then I tried changing up the types of prey I offered him. When he's not running away from fruit flies then he's letting them walk all over his abdomen, When confronted with a mealworm, he bats it on the head as if to get it away from him. I haven't had any success in getting him to eat green bottles either, though that may be more to do with the fact that I can't get them to pupate successfully. I really hope he eats soon, because I am very worried right now...

I hope everyone has had a great new years celebration? I am hoping that my 2024 continues in a better way to the way 2023 ended... And on that note - For the first post of the new year: Catchy the giant praying mantis, and Fred the regal jumping spider.

Okay. I am still feeling the loss of Winnie very hard. So much so that I haven't been able to dispose of her as yet - I have put her little spooder self in the freezer, with the intention of getting her professionally preserved in resin. I don't have the know how to do this, and have been nosing around for this kind of service - Dead Set Co seem to offer professional services at a resonable price, and come highly recommended amongst the spider community, so I will probably ping them an email at the end of the month. However, the loss of Winnie shouldn't impact on my looking after the rest of the Spoods, and so I have spent the last couple of nights painting Fred's castle. Yes, it was already grey and probably could have been left as it was, but I wasn't entirely happy with it. So, after several layers of acrylic paint, several washes, some drybrushing, and a spider friendly varnish ( DecoArt DuraClear Gloss varnish ) I am very happy to present Fred's cast...