Lost & Found

[buzz182]

After a two week period where I have had a couple of escapes I am interested in hearing stories of any escapes and how/where you found your T's.

Luckily my T's are kept in a closed glass cabinet and I found one had visited mealworms in their enclosure while the other took up home in a model ferrari. I am confident that my ventilation holes are too small to provide an escape route. So I can only put it down to either my own negligence when feeding (although both containers were secure when I checked) or my niece or nephew ( both escapes have happened when I have been doing 20+ hour shifts at work)
I will be fitting a secure lock tomorrow on the cabinet to ensure that if this is the case it will not happen again.

 

[chanda]

Wow... Two in two weeks?

I've kept tarantulas (and other critters) for years, and have never actually had a T escape. Sure, I've had a few of my Grammosolas make the occasional "white Bronco" slow-motion break for it while I've been performing cage maintenance, but I don't really count those as real escape attempts. More like a leisurely stroll over the side of the tank, that is easily rectified with no stress and minimal effort.

I did have one close call with my M. balfouri communal when I was out of town and my husband - despite having been told that they would not need feeding while I was gone - decided to feed them anyway. He left the lid ajar and didn't realize that he had done so until a day or two later. Fortunately, none of them noticed or took advantage of it - though I was a bit nervous about it for a while! It took forever for the dang things to all come out of their burrows at once!

On the other hand, while I am very careful about securing anything that is venomous, I have had my share of escapees from the more innoccuous end of the spectrum, and - like you - it was usually when I was careless because I was tired. Once, I wanted to drop off some freshly-caught spiders and other bugs at my classroom after a night hike. I stopped by the school on my way home (around midnight) and needed to borrow a little substrate from my millipede enclosure for one of the new acquisitions. I failed to get the lid all the way shut - which I did not notice until the next morning when I arrived at the school. Sure enough, one of the millipedes was missing - but to my great surprise, my son found him later that day, clear at the other end of campus. He'd gotten down off the table, out the classroom door, down the blacktop outside the elementary classrooms, down the stairs to the lower part of the campus, and across another section of blacktop next to the playground. He was safely recovered and returned to his cage. I also had some caterpillars escape - again, following a late-night visit to the classroom - when I accidentally left the pop-up cage unzipped. They were also recovered unharmed, though they had not gone nearly as far - one was on the window blinds and the other was underneath the table.

I also had a newly purchased vinegaroon escape from the cup I'd brought him home from the expo in. Apparently, the lid on the cup was not properly secured. I just set my bag from the expo in my bug room, then went downstairs to fix dinner from the kids. A short while later, I heard my husband hollering for me that the cat had cornered "something big" under one of the cabinets. Again, I got lucky - the vinegaroon was retrieved, unharmed.

 

[The Grym Reaper]

2x C. elegans slings escaped because I misjudged the size of the vent holes when rehousing = Never recovered.
B. smithi escaped through the gap under the handle of his KK = Found after 36hrs under a pair of cargo pants
C. huahini bolted during rehouse = Recovered after 20 minutes of ripping my bedroom apart.

Had a few close calls with my P. ecclesiasticus and T. rasti, those things are stupidly fast.

 

[Mirandarachnid]

I found one had visited mealworms in their enclosure while the other took up home in a model ferrari.

Your T's know how to party.

My closest call was when I left the lid to my LP enclosure open overnight. Luckily, he didn't notice/care

The other day I found a lone superworm crawling around in my 'enclosure decor' drawer..