Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Spood. Big spood. Showing off his legs spood. Hi, I'm wearing socks spood. This is Poe. Poe is not his permanent name, I just can't decide what to call him yet. This is Poecilotheria metallica , another species from my dream wish list. I absolutely adore the colours on this spider, and affectionately call it "the Lidl spider". This poor spood spent longer in the mail system than I would have liked, as not only did Royal Mail fail on their promise of "next day by 1pm", but my postie didn't even ring my doorbell when delivering. He just put a note through the door and left. This was most frustrating, as with the weather cold and everything shutting down for Christmas, I was very stressed about the poor spood's welfare. After multiple visits to my local office, an hour on hold to customer services, and two posties and a manager frantically searching for the missing parcel, he was finally handed over to me. This is an old world spider with a medica...

Today the stick insects intended for my daughters Christmas present arrived. Fortunately, they were all intact and live, but it could have been a very different story. Last week I decided that since my six year old had been pestering me for a pet for what feels like forever, and since she has taken such an active interest in checking on the Spoods each night with me, that I would order her pets of her own. I was very aware that ultimately the responsibilty of the pet would most likely end up on my shoulders, and that she wasn't ready for something like a Guinea pig or a hamster. So I looked for an appropriate invertebrate pet. Stick insects were my favoured choice, as snails tend to smell really bad. Stick insects are also reasonably easy to keep for beginners, don't require any special food (many eat the plants native to the area around my house) and they are nice and slow for building confidence with handling. Obviously, The Spider Shop is my preferred distributor of in...