Little Milo

[lwood]

Back in April, the San Francisco Chronicle posted a human interest piece announcing that the Bay Area Tarantula Society was holding their Spring Sling Fling at the Concord Veterans' Hall.

I've always been fascinated by creepy-crawlies. When I was young, and Dad had a compost heap in the back yard (our "worm pile"), I would dig around in it and fish out big old night crawlers. When the tree on the back fence was cut down and its stump turned into an ants' nest, I watched them trundle to and fro.

...okay, I also threw slugs into campfires. Fascination is not necessarily a moral impulse.

Anyhoo, I didn't know how the usual suspects for "let's do something random!" would react to today's value of "random" being "full of snakes and bugs! yay!", but it turned out that what happened is that maradydd's husband, enochsmiles, was in town, and thus, random was not only What, but Who, and life was good. We cheerfully bounced around the Veterans' Hall basement, and I came home with Milo.

Milo (who may, eventually, reveal himself to be a Mila) is a Brazilian black tarantula, and when I brought him home, his diameter, including legs, was about as wide as a quarter, and adequate quarters for him, seriously, were in a container not unlike a wide, modified, pill bottle. His breeder assured me that Milo would be happy in this thing for a year, until he outgrew it.

Spiders are Not Like Us. They're not going to do tricks, or have affection, or sling webs and swing around your friendly neighborhood. Mostly, they don't do much unless it's time to eat, molt, or mate.

So, home we came, and along with Milo there have since been a few dozen crickets, who we do not name because they don't last long. They have their own box, and once or twice a week, one is dropped into Milo's jar.

He stopped eating a couple months ago, and that worried me until one morning I woke up, and there was a larger, shinier Milo in one part of the pill bottle...and a curled up grey ghost-Milo in another part.

He'd molted! Yay! Another step on the way to a full-sized Brazilian black, which will have a legspan about as wide as a DVD.

Tonight, when looking in on him (and on the fate of yesterday's cricket), I see that he's molting again! Yay! Now to extract Wednesday's cricket with these handy tweezers---Milo won't want for eating until his new skin, including his new fangs, are hard enough to hunt with, and that will be a couple days.

Go Milo!

-- Lorrie

Comments

[witchchild]

oh wow!

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I know!

I got him rather small, because small is inexpensive--but Grammostola pulchra is a popular beginners' tarantula. Basically, spiderlings of that species are usually $35, but the in-show price was $20. I think I spent about that much again on:

1) A container to put him in when he's larger.
2) A container to keep crickets in while they await their FANGÈD DOOM.
3) Bedding (a block of coconut fiber which I've barely dented)
4) Cricket food.

Then the crickets are a buck every couple weeks--after that, they're too big for him at his current wee size.

Every Wednesday(ish), he gets a cricket.

Every couple weeks, whenever I replace the crickets, I change the bedding for all of them, and the food and water for the crickets.

Quite inexpensive to keep, are spiders.

At full size, after going through all the sizes of cricket, pinky mice are on the menu. That'll be a little harder for me to deal with.

-- Lorrie

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Fascinating! Pictures?

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Yes, pictures please.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

As soon as we handle the technical difficulties, I'll post some!

[ivy]

Awesome! I am pro-spider. [grin] And pro-cricket, but well, that's how life is.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

countgeiger and I will think on how to do this, and post when we manage it--he's not that big, and his container is small and reflective, so getting a decent picture will be tricksy.

-- Lorrie

[tristissima.livejournal.com]

I'm going to throw a vote in as well for pics, expecially because pulchra means beautiful and I want to see any spider whose species name is "beautiful"!!!

:-)

[desika.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Tarantulas are fun pets!

When I was younger I kept a few that I caught in the wild - Texas brown tarantulas, these. The males are somewhat migratory, and go looking for mates during certain seasons - you will find stretches of highway that become tarantula crossings and unfortunately a lot of them get squished.

My favorite thing was always letting them crawl on my arms and hands because their legs feel like living pipe cleaners. You have to be careful not to drop them, though! Falls can hurt them badly - one of my little guys died after I dropped his cage.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Oh, we have them too, only it's

On my birthday (yay!), one of our local parks is having Tarantula Fest (http://www.coepark.org/tfest.html), celebrating the males' annual perambulation in search of sweet cannibalistic lovin'.

No, really. The females like to eat the males after the act. The males have a few defenses against this, but even if they survive, and mate more than once, they don't return to their burrow, but will walk around the hills looking for love until they die, so they may as well be brood food.

-- Lorrie

[faeryl.livejournal.com]

Neat! :-)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Yep!

And no, I haven't blocked the blanket or the shawl yet.

-- Lorrie

[faeryl.livejournal.com]

(and I'm going to stifle the urge to look up possible hoodoo uses for molted tarantula skins *grin* Probably not positive).

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, go on and look anyway, I haven't removed the molt yet in any case.

-- Lorrie

[dasubergeek.livejournal.com]

I had no idea people kept tarantulæ as pets. They're pests here -- they usually spring out of brush on dogwalks and frighten the dogs, and any time you stack wood you can be guaranteed there will be a tarantula or several in there.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Sure--we have them up here, too, which is why one of the state parks holds Tarantula Fest (http://www.coepark.org/tfest.html) every year. This year it's on my birfday.

They don't seem to be as invasive up here as they sound to be down there, though.

-- Lorrie