I think she finally ate!

Garth Vader

Arachnobaron
Joined
Jun 25, 2016
Messages
427
Thank you for the shout out @Andrea82 ! I have an E sp red adult female and a little sling, both are for the purpose of exposure therapy! They are lovely. My adult female will crawl out of her enclosure any chance she gets and walks on my hand (and tries to go up my arm). She is extremely curious.

I have a few suggestions on working with your fear about spiders. Fear is overcome by exposure and familiarity, which offers your brain a new learning experience so eventually it is realized that the feared thing is actually not scary at all. My guess is that through familiarity with your new pets, you will gradually learn that they will not harm you. Of course with tarantulas, this must be balanced with careful tending. I do not handle my sling E sp red, simply because it is so small and can be VERY fast. That thing would be so easy to lose track of. So I actually wouldn't put pressure on handling, especially with your T at this size. I imagine it will come about naturally at some point, and that you will more than likely feel more prepared. If you are not, you can work on it in stages, and when you are ready for that you are welcome to contact me and I can offer some suggestions. In the meantime, just reading in here and watching T videos will increase your familiarity and help with your fears. I have my therapy clients work on touching and handling true spiders I collect from my garden before they would ever be around my T outside of her enclosure. Even then, I do not have them touch her but rather we watch her on the floor and they watch me handle her a bit (as necessary, because she gets all up in my business!).

For what it's worth, I was very nervous when I first got my Ts and I feel cool as a cucumber around them now. I wasn't fearful, but they were new and different and they made me nervous that I'd do something stupid and harm them. I wasn't sure what they would do, and my other T is a little juvenile Aphonopelma anax and he's shy and skittish so when I had to move him and get his enclosure set up it took a very long time to get him to move. I remember being sweaty and shaky and I had to take a lot of breaks. I just didn't know what I was doing and it made me very nervous. It's been a few months now and I feel very calm around them now and interestingly, observing the Ts and their way of being adds to that calmness. My nervousness went down simply through learning and spending time with the Ts. I really enjoy showing them to people and many therapists who visit my office like to visit with them because they are such interesting creatures. I think you will really enjoy your E sp red. I am so grateful to this board for suggesting that species to me because they are very wonderful. BY the way, my adult E sp red has YET TO EAT ANYTHING and I've had her for a bit over 2 months now! She looks like she's in early pre molt, which the breeder confirmed so I'm not too worried, but geez! My sling molted last week and looked very, very fat in the abdomen (much bigger than your picture), refused food for about 2 weeks, and didn't move around a whole lot. It seemed pretty obvious.

Good luck with your t!
 
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