Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

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...

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...

Well, this is sad. I came home from work last night to find that both of my daughter's female stick insects had died. I did suspect they wouldn't last very long, as when they arrived they were larger than I thought I was buying - mature rather than the nymphs I expected. However, I had hoped that they would live a little longer than this. It's possible that they fell victim to the ministrations of a six year old, and one of the females had a habit of escaping to it's also possible they were exposed to environmental issues. Though given their size, and the fact that Zucchini at least had started to slow down a week or two ago, I do suspect old age. I now have to decide whether or not to replace the females. I know that my daughter would like me to, but she does still have the two males to look after. And I have not been cleaning the floor or the enclosure in the hopes that there may be eggs in there. So it may be that there will be stick insect nymphs in there so...

Apologies if this upsets anyone, but today was a bad day. Tonight I lost my beautiful Winnie. My first sppod, the cutest little spood that ever was. I am absolutely devastated, and yes - I am crying. I don't know how or why she has passed. It was unexpected and very sudden. After all the stress of her over eating after the waxworm, she went into an unexpected molt about 10 to 14 days later. I kept an eye on her, checking and misting every day. Today at lunchtime she seemed to come out of her molt just fine - all limbs intact, seemingly no issues. I was so happy and felt I could finally relax - I took a photo and left her in her molting hammock excited to see her new clothes and slimmer waistline... But just a couple of hours later she was gone. I found her on the floor of her enclosure in a death curl. It is unusual for a spider to leave their molting hide after such a small amount of time. I had expected her to be in her molt hammock for at least four days, in line with the ...