OOOPs....I Guess I Got Lucky!!!

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
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:8o well folks.....the other day i did something i have read about MANY, MANY times and thought would never happen to me....i got my spider out to take some pics of him and when i was carrying him (in my hands) back to his tank.....something (maybe a hook on one of his legs or something) pricked me and i freaked and jerked my hand out from under the spider.......well....of course my spider went tumbling to the floor (from about 3-4 feet up) and landed flat on his back on the linoleum in the kitchen.......he righted himself and i scooped him up (in a small plastic container cause i didnt know if he would be ready to bite after the fall like injured cats and dogs will sometimes bite) and i put him back in his tank.....well he was walking and holding his #2 leg on the right side up in the air (obviously the leg was injured)....i got him out again and put him in a small plastic container about his size with a clear lid on it so i could examine him.....he had clear liquid (blood??) coming from the second joint on that leg......i was able to blot the liquid off with a tissue and watched him for a bit and he started using the leg again and no more liquid ever came out.....i looked as closely as possible to make sure his abdomen wasn't ruptured and have been monitoring him closely for the past 2 days......he seems to have made a 100% recovery and has been acting 100% normal ever since........i feel like such an idiot for letting this happen after reading about it soooo much!!! i guess i will be 200% more careful if i ever get him out again.......you guys can now flame me all you want for being so careless but, i have learned a lesson i hope i won't repeat....:8o :8o anyone else care to share a stupidity/carelessness story about how you injured/killed a T so i won't feel so alone in this??:confused:
 

Botar

Arachnoprince
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I'm going to have to let you stand alone on this one. Like you, my paranoia of hurting the T has kept me from doing much handling. Unlike you though, my paranoia is still pretty much in tact. I've handled my B. smithi and G. rosea during cage transfers, but that's about it. I did, however, one up you in a sense. I put my B. smithi on my daughters hand sitting at the table. She felt a little prick, as you mentioned, and freaked out. I was concerned for both of them at that point. If that ever happens again, she'll be sitting on the bed or the carpet. I hope your T recovers.

Botar
 

Immortal_sin

Arachnotemptress
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Jul 17, 2002
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well, I'm glad it went better than it could have. I don't have any horror stories from handling, but I did crush a 1" B albopilosum sling the week I received him/her. It was awful...I was feeding, and concentrating on keeping the cricket in. I didn't notice the sling had crawled halfway out of the container. The injury was so awful and severe, I had to put the poor little thing out of it's misery.
My daughter was sitting there and saw the whole thing, she was devastated, and actually, I was damn upset myself. Needless to say, it hasn't happened again...I am MUCH more careful.
 

Botar

Arachnoprince
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Immortal Sin,

I worry about injuring the tiny slings while unpacking them from the dealer. I'm afraid when I pull that papertowel out that I'm going to tear off a leg or something. I find myself all bent over trying to delicately pull the paper towel out while searching for the sling. Kind of reminds me of playing "Operation".

Botar
 

atavuss

Arachnoprince
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Aug 16, 2002
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I rarely if ever handle any of my t's so I don't have a story to relate about dropping a t........however the other day I was feeding and watering my smithi group and a hungry 3.5" smithi grabbed the turkey baster I use to refill water dishes and startled me so that I jerked and the smith went flying.......I do all my enclosure chores on a desk with the enclosure inside a 66 quart sterilite bin, the smithi hit the side of the bin and apparantly no suffered no injury. I was upset as I was sure it hit the side hard enough to injure it some way or another. I was also sure that it would flick hairs as it is one of the worst kickers of my group but I was able to scoot it back into it's home without a hair kicked from it.
Ed
 

bness2

Arachnoknight
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Sep 21, 2002
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150
Well, I know you read my other post, in which one of my students did the honors. In detail, I had the T out and I was walking around in the hall outside my lab and this student was a little nervous but wanted to hold it. I coaxed it into his hands and everything was fine until I did the stupidest thing. I touched one of the T's legs, which often makes him move, which he did, and the student freaked. He dropped it at about chest height (and he is a tall student) and it landed right side up. I immediately picked it up and my hand got drenched with hemolymph.

I got him back to the cage and it quickly became clear that he was dying right before my eyes. Her abdomen was badly ruptured. I put it to sleep using my usual method of chloroforming in a jar. I was pretty shook up. The student was pretty shook up too. He promised to get me a new one, and I tried to assure him it was okay. He did show up later that day with a new rosie, a male, unfortunately.

Now, anyone who holds one of my T's will have to sit on the floor.

Take Care,

Bryan
 

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
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bness.....yeah i read your post.....thats why i guess i got lucky....the sound it made when my T hit the floor i was sure he was a gonner....but maybe since he landed on his back, his legs broke the fall??? i dont know...to look at him now....you cant tell anything ever happened....he seems perfectly normal and his leg is functioning 100% as far as i can tell...(which is a good thing because he has already had his ultimate moult so there would have been no regeneration)
 
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The_Phantom

Scarlet O' Hairy
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I rarely handle them either, dont wanna droppem or get flicked...not to mention those damn feet hooks that get caught in everything !
 

galeogirl

Arachnoprince
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Aug 15, 2002
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I'm allergic to the hair so I don't handle my spiders very often, when I do it's usually by the cup and cardboard method.

However, I used to have a rather large and nasty female C. crawshayi and she decided one day to run up the tongs and use my hand as a perch in order to gain a better angle of attack on the offending invader. I stood there watching her duke it out with the tongs just above my fingers and had to remind myself repeatedly not to fling the damn spider. I would never consider myself arachnophobic, but I was considering the merits of it at that moment.

Eventually she clambered back down them into her cage and I let her have them for the night, figuring that I could retrieve them when my hands weren't shaking quite so badly.
 

johns

Arachnoknight
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Jul 19, 2002
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I foolishly dropped an adult M. giganteus to the hardfloor once, thus effectively pulping its insides. It's not a tarantula, but it's an arachnid, a living thing...


About 15 minutes later, the animal died, and I felt like I had in someways lost a companion, a nifty athropod amigo.
 

MrT

Arachnoking
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Aug 13, 2002
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About a week ago I gave a T to a customer of mine after telling her about the hobby. Transferring the spider and water bowl into its new tank went fine. But when I was moving its hide to the tank, the corner caught the edge and flipped out of my hand hitting the T. I thought for sure I killed it. I guess it was my lucky day because the spider was unhurt.
I'd say, you just can't be to careful when handling our pet Tarantulas
 

Rookie

Arachnoknight
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unpacking

Hey Botar (or anyone else),
Are there any special precautions i should take when i unpack the s'ling that i should get by wednesday or thursday? i definitly don't want to injure my T before I even get the chance to understand it and enjoy it. can i just open the pill bottle and let him crawl into his baby food jar?
also, when i mist the T, can i do this through the air holes, or do i have to open the jar? will he try to scurry out if I do this?
Thanks again,
The Rookie
 
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galeogirl

Arachnoprince
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With more docile species, I just lift the paper towel out of the shipping container with my fingers and gently set it down in the new enclosure. I remove the paper towel once the spider has crawled out. With more aggressive species, I use chopsticks to pick up the paper towel and put it in the new enclosure. For really small spiderlings, it's possible to pick them up with a soft, clean paintbrush and transfer them that way.
 

MrDeranged

He Who Rules
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2,000
Luckily, I've only had one major mishap so far and through even better luck, it turned out okay in the end.

While doing routine maintenance one evening, I was in a hurry and just pulled a lid off of a container without looking to see the placement of the sling in it. Apparently, it had one leg hooked into the lid while the other 7 were firmly hooked into the substrate. As you may have guessed, leg number 8 came right off with the lid :(. Luckily, it was a clean seperation and it clotted quickly and with no intervention from myself. The T recently molted and has a perfectly formed 8th leg again, if a little bit smaller than the other seven. Needless to say, I now always check to see where the slings are in their enclosures before opening them.

Scott
 

Botar

Arachnoprince
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Re: unpacking

Originally posted by Rookie
Hey Botar (or anyone else),
Are there any special precautions i should take when i unpack the s'ling that i should get by wednesday or thursday? i definitly don't want to injure my T before I even get the chance to understand it and enjoy it. can i just open the pill bottle and let him crawl into his baby food jar?
also, when i mist the T, can i do this through the air holes, or do i have to open the jar? will he try to scurry out if I do this?
Thanks again,
The Rookie
I'm in agreement with Galeogirl. I haven't a great deal of experience, but my collection has increased by about 20 in the last month or so and most of them were slings. IMO, you can gently manuever them into their enclosures from the paper towel/shipping container with a paint brush. (also already mentioned) I've also put the pill bottle into a deli container and just let them come out on their own. If there is substrate in the pill bottle, that seems to be the easiest method. Kind of difficult to dig a tiny T out of a tiny enclosure and why risk injuring the little guy. Just let him come out on his own. As for water, most people recommend you mist the inner wall of the enclosure, but I have let water dribble in through the air holes without any problems. You'll soon get a feel for your new T's personality and what will work best for you. Good luck. I've found the tiny ones are a lot of fun.

Botar
 

Code Monkey

Arachnoemperor
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Jul 22, 2002
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3,783
Heh, unpacking is the best part :D

What I do is I make sure that I've got whatever sling vial, mini kritter keeper, deli cup, etc. that I'm going to put them in completely prepared and ready to go before I get started. Then I open the vial/cup up in a larger pet pal and remove the paper toweling or peat (depending on who packed it). This is the fun part, you usually never know just how big that "sling" is, nor just where it will be in the packing ;)

Once I find the little bugger, I try to just herd it gently with a paint brush into its new home. This is not always successful which is why I work in the kritter keeper. First, if I find the home I had set up is inappropriately sized, I just pop the top on the kritter keeper and go get a properly sized enclosure. Second, the herding isn't a scientific process. I've had slings up my arm, across my shoulders and down the other arm before I could say, "DOH", or slings that reach the edge of their shipping vial and make a bold leap for liberty. The keeper helps with all of this.
 

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
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508
UPDATE: well....this is hard to explain but here goes....sometimes i "pet" my spider....meaning i use my index finger and sort of pet him on his abdomen....mainly just to keep him used to human contact....well this usually never causes any problems and the spider mostly doesnt mind......but i have done this a couple of times since i dropped him and this last time, i looked at my finger when i was done.....the tip of my finger was covered with what i can only describe as fuzzy little hairs.....now these arent the big rosie looking hairs like he has all over his body...its almost as if some of that "under fuzz" or "spider down" has come off on me.....which i noticed it looks like some of his "under fuzz" on his abdomen has come loose after i dropped him.....the main reason i even bothered to look (at my finger) is because the other night after i had done this ..my neck was itching like hell and i figured i must have gotten some hairs (unknowingly) on my finger and then transferred them to my neck while scratching.... :?:?:?
ARE THESE URTICATING HAIRS??? they had the consistency of some finely ground fiberglass hairs or something....i washed them off immediately of course....but perhaps when i dropped him i dislodged a bunch of his urticating hairs???...i noticed this the other day...i thought maybe he had mites or something cause i saw a little (rose colored) fuzzy patch on his abdomen but i looked as closely as i could and determined it wasnt mites it just looked like fuzz in a spot.......i just thought it was weird cause i thought all of his "under fuzz" was blackish in color and this was rose colored....maybe they look rose colored when they arent all packed together on his back?? :?

hopefully this is as clear as mud and i havent totally confused everyone?:?
 

Botar

Arachnoprince
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Sounds like urticating hairs to me and I doubt it has anything to do with the T being dropped. With that being said, you may be stressing the T out.

Botar
 

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
Messages
508
hmmmm well i guess anything is possible but i never saw that fuzzy patch on his back until right after i dropped him.....do these hairs come loose on their own (possibly due to stress) or do they have to be physically rubbed off to come loose?
 
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