I'm afraid it has been another one of those months where JW has to spend all his available 'Spider time' actually looking after the spiders, rather than having enough time to do that AND take all the photos, and run the site too, but this weekend I set up a camera on standby, and took whatever photos I could get as I went in to check on them... some were OK, and some were duff, but in the absence of anything better, please accept my apologies for any ropey ones.

 

Absent from today's pics is Ginny, who is currently sitting in the least photo-accessible place she possibly could be. But she is not without news... Oh no - little Ginny, traditionally the most cautious and lazy spider I look after, has risen to greater challenges this month than ever before... What am I talking about ?

 

Cockroaches - that's what. Whereas nearly every other spider I have seen jumps on cockroaches as soon as they arrive, and with much enthusiasm, that has never been in Ginny's plans - normally she would run away from them, even small ones, and confine her diet to small field circkets.

 

But this week she mustered up the energy to have a strike at a death's head hisser I popped in for her. So well done her - she has moved up in the world, and there's another reason for me to stop keeping crickets as food. Roaches are far superior in every way. And marginally more endearing, albeit more in personality, and behaviour towards each other, rather than in appearance.

 

Right - let's have some photos...

 

Look who's moulted !! Yep - only last month I moved her into her new home, and she came out every day to bask until about a week ago, when she retired to the safety and darkness of her bamboo tube burrow for 4 days flat. Here it is, with her in it, not that you'd know...

 

 

And then yesterday, here she is, 7th instar, back out on display, but 3 1/2" big rather than the 2" she was before, and with some even better colouring than last time. And Leggier. So well done Legz - another moult, another set of appendages that make your name ever more relevant. For safety's sake, I should temper that with the phrase 'another moult, another (bigger) spider, with a potentially completely new personality, and more venom than last time. Bless her, she seems very calm so far though. Here she is, basking on the heatmat merely a day after leaving her former self... not freaked out by flash lighting either a far as I could tell. Talking of which...

 

 

 

Flash is up next, whilst we're catching up on small arboreal spiders, and although she doesn't grow anything like as fast as young pokie Legz, grow she does....

 

This month she too has moulted again (4th instar) and has had to develop her webbing so encompass her greater size. She is eating well as far as I can see, but has now become very jumpy, and scared, and really doesn't like me misting her tank through the center hole in her 'inner lining', which she has webbed fast to the tank as a whole. Good job I put it there, or I'd have no access at all. I worry about her ventilation situation now that this is the case, and will invariably be building her a larger tank soon. That will be an interesting transfer to do.

 

Here she is, viewed from above, unfortunately through the 'inner ring' she has webbed her new home to the inside of:

No point clicking this one - too rubbish a photo to be worth viewing full size...sorry about that. 

 

 
And here's that webbing, which has most definitely got bigger since last time... this IS worth clicking for a full view...
You can see her most recent 2 exuviae, if you look carefully, neither of which I have been able to get out since her 2nd moult! We shall have them to examine when she moves house, but until then its not worth the disturbance it would cause her to go in and get them... 

 

 

Talking of transfers, (and that's the second vaguely clever link I've shoe-horned in already - must be on a roll) Little Tenebrus isn't so little any more. New personality again, one more moult, and she's now a 3rd instar orange and black bundle of agitation. who has also expanded webbing to accomodate increased size. And that jar is now definitely too small. I make her new home tonight... Photos of her next month, I promise...

 

Talking of new homes (and again !) after 6 weeks of careful preparation, trying to get hold of the right bits of stuff, and lots of drilling, Binky's new house is complete. Not a minute too soon, as today's photo's of him will attest. Further tests have revealed that is almost certainly bright light that makes him start climbing, usually from the main light in the spider room, which needs to be on when I do feeding at night, or go to take photos to show you all... I had tried to counter this 'in-situ' so to speak by covering one end of the tank in dark cloth, but the success was minimal, and he climbed only a bit less when the light was on. So - that's it - can't have unhappy climbing spiders, so new tank it is. And what a tank...

 

You'll have to wait til next month for the photos, when we  can see little Binksters transferred in, and hopefully happy, but here he is ably demonstrating to me in various ways that he would rather not be in his current home any more.

 

 

 

 

 

Next in this month's archnid-based extravaganza is little Fluffy, my Peruvian Orange-stripe T. Well - all last month it was 'hide-in burrow' time, and then out she came, and has stayed out ever since, eating like a loon, and generally hanging out and lookin cool. Here she is, doing her thing.Today, her thing is general wandering.

 

 

Also pictured here 'doing her thing' (OK - that one was tenuous) ZBD is, at the moment, the best-behaved and most content of all my spiders. In this month there has been not a single sign of naughtiness, or non-contentedness from her. This might be because I gave her a HUUGE cockroach  at the beginning of last week, which she was very pleased with, and is now too fat to move much. She should have a word with Binky, who had a slightly smaller roach at the same time, and doesn't feel quite the same sense of lethergy.

 

 

 

 

 

My good friends over in the Haslemere Pet department (that'll be Pet's & Gardens then) have recently contributed an even huuuuuger (over 2" in fact) Giant Cala Cockroach to my feeding stocks, and rescued me a large adult locust for Binky, and into the bargain I was lucky enough to be given the opoortunity to rehouse the 2 Chile Rose sub-adult spiders they had in there. May I say a big well done to Claire for noticing her T's weren't happy, and then doing something about it (other pet shop owners, please take note). I will be phoning this week to see how they've been getting on.

 

We only had damp substrate to re-home them with at the time, so I'm hoping this has now dried out enough to make them happy T's. Actually, in not much time, Claire & myself did a pretty good general overhaul, installing dark areas in the tanks, modifying the humidity up around 30%, new burrows, cork bark chips, and we even built a little partition so that the light from the heat source they are close to would not bother them so much. 

 

 

LOTS to show you next month, though - 2 tank transfers, some video, I'd hope, and some spidery Christmas specials will no doubt be along too...

 

Take care everyone...