- Joined
- Sep 18, 2002
- Messages
- 320
Yesterday I made a second attempt to overcome my "hesitance" to handle my G. Pulchra 1 1/4" spiderling. It took about an hour, but I worked my way to having it on its petpal lid, which was angled slighly into the edge of my hand.
This is the standard advice for handling tarantulas, and the following is a quote from a PDF on handling spiderlings:
"If one wishes to hold the spider, place a hand in front of the spider with the palm upward. Gently prod the spider from the back with a pencil or your finger. It will crawl up on the hand."
I gently prodded the spider with the tip of a small rolled-up paper towel - the spiderling proceeded to make a mad dash under the couch, about seven feet away! The couch was a hide-away bed, and I could not see the spiderling anywhere under it, so I was forced to gently lift up on it. Fortunately , the sling had climbed up to where he was exposed by that action, but unfortunately he moved to a seem where any movement of the bed would have crushed him. I was lucky enough to gradually herd him away from the couch where I put a glad container bowl over him and a cardboard sheet under him. It took an hour to gradually recapture him.
The sling could easily have climbed somewhere impossible to find , or gone to a place where he would have been crushed, either then or later. When I first put him in his keeper 13 days ago, he moved suddenly, but not more than a foot, and stopped. Therefore, I thought it was his nature to always do this. I could not have imagined him running across the room like a common wood spider in heat.
In no case did he flick hairs or show aggression. He acted frightened, and ran in brief desperate bursts of speed that surprised me, but mostly tried to just quietly hide. After he was back in his pen, he stood on two legs, his body flush against the glass, looking at me in what I imagined to be righteous anger.
I thought he was going to act like a docile pet and he really acted like a poor little scared spider that had gotten in by accident. What I did seemed cruel, and I'm not sure I'll try it again.
I gave him a specially large cricket and he was munching on it in the middle of the night, and did massive earth-moving and even dug a "shallow grave" burrow and was lying in it when I got up this morning. I think all that activity might have been a nervous reaction to his ordeal.
I would like to ask those people who show pictures of themselves handling spiderlings: What planet do you live on? Do you put them in the fridge for 15 minutes before you handle them? Or did I end up with a frenetic Brazilian Black?
This is the standard advice for handling tarantulas, and the following is a quote from a PDF on handling spiderlings:
"If one wishes to hold the spider, place a hand in front of the spider with the palm upward. Gently prod the spider from the back with a pencil or your finger. It will crawl up on the hand."
I gently prodded the spider with the tip of a small rolled-up paper towel - the spiderling proceeded to make a mad dash under the couch, about seven feet away! The couch was a hide-away bed, and I could not see the spiderling anywhere under it, so I was forced to gently lift up on it. Fortunately , the sling had climbed up to where he was exposed by that action, but unfortunately he moved to a seem where any movement of the bed would have crushed him. I was lucky enough to gradually herd him away from the couch where I put a glad container bowl over him and a cardboard sheet under him. It took an hour to gradually recapture him.
The sling could easily have climbed somewhere impossible to find , or gone to a place where he would have been crushed, either then or later. When I first put him in his keeper 13 days ago, he moved suddenly, but not more than a foot, and stopped. Therefore, I thought it was his nature to always do this. I could not have imagined him running across the room like a common wood spider in heat.
In no case did he flick hairs or show aggression. He acted frightened, and ran in brief desperate bursts of speed that surprised me, but mostly tried to just quietly hide. After he was back in his pen, he stood on two legs, his body flush against the glass, looking at me in what I imagined to be righteous anger.
I thought he was going to act like a docile pet and he really acted like a poor little scared spider that had gotten in by accident. What I did seemed cruel, and I'm not sure I'll try it again.
I gave him a specially large cricket and he was munching on it in the middle of the night, and did massive earth-moving and even dug a "shallow grave" burrow and was lying in it when I got up this morning. I think all that activity might have been a nervous reaction to his ordeal.
I would like to ask those people who show pictures of themselves handling spiderlings: What planet do you live on? Do you put them in the fridge for 15 minutes before you handle them? Or did I end up with a frenetic Brazilian Black?
