HELP! Do Tepidariorum hibernate indoors?

[HouseSpiderMA]

Hi everyone, I am new to spiders - I have been keeping a lovely female American House Spider that I watched outside my window all summer long. When the cold weather hit, I brought her in (5 months ago) and have housed her in a 12x12x12 reptile aquarium. She was doing great until a few days ago,when she started to hide on the bottom of the cage behind a cup of fly larva. Within a day, I found her in a death curl. By a day later, she still had not moved, so I concluded her time had come...

When I last moved her, to put her in the freezer, one leg extended a bit but she was completely unresponsive. I thought the leg stretch was rigor letting up, but ever since, it has bothered me... Is there any chance she might have just been hibernating? Or for some other reason not dead yet?

I do not believe she was dehydrated - I misted her, her web and the aquarium lightly several times a day every day. She also had eaten 1-2 house flies in the day or so before it happened, and several more were in the aquarium so she wasn"t hungry.

After I started worrying about all this, I retrieved her from the freezer to look and all her legs were spread fully and she looked normal again. Well, except that I had frozen her for a day... Is there any chance I made a terrible mistake here? Do American House Spiders hibernate?

 

[buthus]

They are a seasonal spider ...the females live for a few months.

When u froze her, the fluid in her froze, expanding her legs outwards.

 

[HouseSpiderMA]

Thank you. I felt horrible to think she might have still been alive and that I froze her... I feel much better now.

She was so beautiful and I came to just adore her. She was at least 8 months old from when I first saw her as an adult, so I guess she had a decently long life. Wish it could have been much longer...