- Joined
- Jan 30, 2012
- Messages
- 3,797
So after losing a number of my favs, here's a few short stories to cast a smile on peoples faces for a change.
#1 - The "Pirmia terrosus"
As many know, I have a couple P. irminia girls "Phaedra" & "Firali", with the latter being the one almost always annoyed. She's been in hidden for roughly 6 weeks now and aside from refilling the waterdish, there's nothing to do in her enclosure. It's business as usual: Open, refill dish, close - next enclosure...so one would think (...and I was used to) considering the spider is holed up in her corkbark tube that's closed with a ton of webbing (complete with the complimentary 1/4 of eco-earth from the other side of the enclosure...). Not today, I guess...
I open the enclosure, grab the dish with my tongs, put the lid back on and go to clean said dish. Once back, I open the enclosure again, place the dish back in with my tongs, look from the side if it's standing flat and see it's slightly angled. Instead of using my tongs now again, I pick up the chopstick next to it and use it to correct the placement. On my way out, I drop the chopstick which (naturally!) lands right ontop of the corkbark. Dirt flies left and right and within the blink of an eye my tool is 3/4 vanished in Firali's house.
Suffice to say she was absolutely raging and I had to wait for over 2 hours before she let go of it and allowed me to pull it back out. And with only that short end sticking out of her home, it was interesting, too. Had to be done though, otherwise lid wouldn't close.
Morale of the story? A sealed-in P. irminia doesn't mean it's defenseless or blind and daft to its surroundings! Gotta love having to wrestle with a spider that's obviously in heavy premolt and totally out of her mind. Since I have no syringe, she'll have to live with me interrupting her sleep now then furthermore, but the next time...I'll forego the chopstick and use the tongs as I do normally.
#2 - "Diggin' Diggerty Diggeroo" (or "My E. sp. "red" keeps bulldozing)
The 3 females I'm still keeping are all doing well and fine, but except one - they didn't have any sort of hide. Mainly because the one that does, is in another, bigger enclosure that has a small half coconut in there. Instead of using that one, she's digging the hell out of ever single corner -around- that offered hide though. Fun? Now, after months she finally accepted it and uses it - although she still moved the earth from the backside to the front. I believe she wanted an alternate exit/entrance.
As for the other couple, they're in somewhat smaller enclosures and I didn't have any more coconut halfs, plus they wouldn't fit in there. And since cork+moist substrate doesn't exactly work that well in general, I didn't offer that either. So what to do? Eventually I remember I still had these natural things I bought when I started and that were only used by my A. purpureas back then. They're basically ~3" long with a 0.5" diameter opening so I tried those and - oh wonder! Both of my other girls immediately went for them. Since then, I only see them when I open the lid, because that's when they come out to check what's goin on. Funny enough, if I don't toss a feeder in there, they go right back in like "No food? Eh, whatever...back to sleep." Since then the digging has nearly stopped completely. Interestingly so...
#1 - The "Pirmia terrosus"
As many know, I have a couple P. irminia girls "Phaedra" & "Firali", with the latter being the one almost always annoyed. She's been in hidden for roughly 6 weeks now and aside from refilling the waterdish, there's nothing to do in her enclosure. It's business as usual: Open, refill dish, close - next enclosure...so one would think (...and I was used to) considering the spider is holed up in her corkbark tube that's closed with a ton of webbing (complete with the complimentary 1/4 of eco-earth from the other side of the enclosure...). Not today, I guess...
I open the enclosure, grab the dish with my tongs, put the lid back on and go to clean said dish. Once back, I open the enclosure again, place the dish back in with my tongs, look from the side if it's standing flat and see it's slightly angled. Instead of using my tongs now again, I pick up the chopstick next to it and use it to correct the placement. On my way out, I drop the chopstick which (naturally!) lands right ontop of the corkbark. Dirt flies left and right and within the blink of an eye my tool is 3/4 vanished in Firali's house.
Suffice to say she was absolutely raging and I had to wait for over 2 hours before she let go of it and allowed me to pull it back out. And with only that short end sticking out of her home, it was interesting, too. Had to be done though, otherwise lid wouldn't close.
Morale of the story? A sealed-in P. irminia doesn't mean it's defenseless or blind and daft to its surroundings! Gotta love having to wrestle with a spider that's obviously in heavy premolt and totally out of her mind. Since I have no syringe, she'll have to live with me interrupting her sleep now then furthermore, but the next time...I'll forego the chopstick and use the tongs as I do normally.
#2 - "Diggin' Diggerty Diggeroo" (or "My E. sp. "red" keeps bulldozing)
The 3 females I'm still keeping are all doing well and fine, but except one - they didn't have any sort of hide. Mainly because the one that does, is in another, bigger enclosure that has a small half coconut in there. Instead of using that one, she's digging the hell out of ever single corner -around- that offered hide though. Fun? Now, after months she finally accepted it and uses it - although she still moved the earth from the backside to the front. I believe she wanted an alternate exit/entrance.
As for the other couple, they're in somewhat smaller enclosures and I didn't have any more coconut halfs, plus they wouldn't fit in there. And since cork+moist substrate doesn't exactly work that well in general, I didn't offer that either. So what to do? Eventually I remember I still had these natural things I bought when I started and that were only used by my A. purpureas back then. They're basically ~3" long with a 0.5" diameter opening so I tried those and - oh wonder! Both of my other girls immediately went for them. Since then, I only see them when I open the lid, because that's when they come out to check what's goin on. Funny enough, if I don't toss a feeder in there, they go right back in like "No food? Eh, whatever...back to sleep." Since then the digging has nearly stopped completely. Interestingly so...