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...

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.

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.

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...

I haven't had much to report on Ladybug for a little while. Ladybug is a very shy spider who spends most of his time hiding in his nest, only coming out when he's wanting to hunt. He's not overly sociable and he definitely doesn't like to be handled, which I have to respect. Since I got him I've been umming and ahhing about what gender he is - His colouration seemed to indicate that he was a female, as males are supposed to be scarlet red. However, after his most recent molt he seems to be developing the chonky front legs and the "boxing glove" pedipalps of a male. He is still clearly a sub-adult, so maybe his colouration will change with his next molt, but I definitely believe him to be a male now. You can clearly see that his front legs have become chonkier than his other six (all the better to dance the mamba with), and the tips of his pedipalps are becoming more bulbous. He may only have one molt left before he's mature and unfortunately I don...

I had a visitor! My first wild UK jumping Spood! I was finally finsihing off setting up my crafting room/wman's cave/Spoodoir, when I happened to look up and see this tiny little black speck making its way across the door frame. From the way it was moving it was clear that whatever it was, it was definitely a jumping spider, so I grabbed a little container to get a closer look. As you can see from the photos, she was absolutely tiny! About 4mm long, front to back. I was hoping to identify her species, but I couldn't see clearly enough to tell any distinguishing features. So I gave her a fruit fly to make sure she was well fed, and then I put her in a warm dark place (next to my other spoods) in preparation for bringing her to work with me. Before this, I was under the impression that we only had one species of jumping spider in the UK - The zebra jumper. I knew that this little critter was not a zebra jumper - a zebra jumper has black and white stripes on its body, as yo...

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...

This is Ladybug. Ladybug is my third jumping spider, though she is not a Regal jumper like Fred and Wilma are. She is a Widow jumping spider, or Phidippus ardens . I believe this spider is a she, as the males tend to be a vibrant red (hence her name) while she is more of a burned orange on her abdomen. I don't have a particularly imaginative enclosure for her right now - I haven't decided what "theme" to decorate it with. But right now she has been moved into a spare acrylic arboreal enclose I had lying around, has been fed and watered, and has not so helpfully made her hammock and attached it to the front door. Should I ever open her enclosure, I will destroy her house... Fortunately this enclosure has a second feeding hatch, so it's not so critical.... yet.

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.

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'...