- Joined
- Jul 16, 2004
- Messages
- 1,677
Wow! GREAT NEWS! Well, at least you solved your problem, and the other issues are none-issues. Don't you just love it when things fall together for a change instead of everything always falling apart?
Over my several decades of dealing with people and tarantulas I've found that most people who think they're afraid of them really aren't. They're actually terrified of some hypothetical, imaginary banshee that they've created for themselves and exists completely between their ears, and has little or nothing in common with real spiders. Once they get through that figment of their imagination, everything's cool.
No, no, no! You've got the wrong idea! First, here is a little essay that I'm trying to find time to turn into a webpage.
THE CANNED STRESS LECTURE (I just LOVE to give it!):
Stress? You wanna know about STRESS?
Historically, these creatures or their precursors have been around for well over half a BILLION years! Their distant ancestors were among the very first land animals. Their evolutionary line has surfed the continents while they collided and split at least twice with force 10 earthquakes or better, and mile high tsunamis.
They have survived no less than 4 great extinctions. Their ancestors and they have seen the coming and the passing of trilobites, ammonites, the coal ages, the dinosaurs, Archeopteryx, ground sloths and sabertooth cats. They will be digging their burrows on our graves someday.
They have endured meteor falls, asteroid impacts, and comet strikes that literally changed life on Earth forever.
They have witnessed super-volcanic eruptions with continent-wide firestorms and century long, nuclear winter type blackouts from the dust and ash.
Million year long ice ages; millennia long, epic droughts; and floods of biblical proportion are almost an everyday occurrence for them.
They've survived being dumped on by Tyrannosaurus rex and peed on by mammoths and mastodons alike.
They've survived DDT, Elvis Presley, and even incarceration in prison!
Wild caught tarantulas have been abducted from their nice comfy burrows by some huge; disgusting; clumsy; misshapen; alien thing with body odor, bad breath, and not enough legs; stuffed into vile little deli cups with a rotten wad of cotton; shipped to the other side of the planet; displayed in some godawful cell with too bright lights and too much commotion in some pet shop, while being stared at by more of those strange alien things. Then they're jiggled, bounced, dropped, overheated or almost froze, or otherwise almost killed before they arrive in our homes.
But it doesn't stop there! They're put into another bizarre cell with clear walls and no privacy whatsoever, with some wild cat-thing always staring hungrily through the glass. The lighting is all wrong. There are no fantastic sunrises and sunsets. There are no seasons. It never rains, and this fool alien thing comes through and sprays the tarantula with (UGH!) water every day or two. (What does it think you are, a geranium?)
And, they're living in a bland, apartment beige place with nothing to do but sit there and stare back at those alien things as they stare back in return. Once in a while one of the tarantulas is touched by one of those aliens, even picked up! At first it was really scary! Now, they're kind of getting used to it.
The food's always the same, and there's too much of it. You're rapidly losing your slim, girlish figure.
And while you haven't had to worry about road-runners, warthogs, and the like lately, you also have about the same chances as an ice cube in Hell of ever doing the mating thing. There goes your sex life, and so much for the species!
But, once the shock wears off, those funny god-like, alien things are actually kind of amusing. Clumsy, smelly, and ugly, but amusing. They make good pets.
Now THAT is stress! If they've survived that, they can survive just about anything! Stress should be way down your list of concerns, pretty near the bottom.
Now, tell me again what part of your activities do you think are going to cause your little buddy undue stress? And, why might it be important?
Enjoy your little laid-back stress-a-holic!
The whole point is that YOU SHOULD NOT TOUCH OR MOVE THEM for fear of rupturing the new, developing exoskeleton inside the old one. That would be disastrous. Stress, like temperature, is almost irrelevant.
I've just reviewed your other postings and nowhere do you tell us how big your tarantula is. We're getting to that time of the year which some call the "Molt-a-rama!" Very nearly every Northern Hemisphere acclimated tarantula that's old enough to have switched to an annual molting cycle is going to molt within the next 90 days. If yours falls into that category, that's probably why it's stopped eating.
And, if it's still a spiderling and molting more often than once a year, it's also entirely likely that it's still going to molt.
WE NEEDS PICHERS!. WE LUVS PICHERS!. And, not just from the top either. We need them from the front, both sides, the rear, maybe the belly, as well as the top. Most cell phone cameras are pretty bad at closeups. Do you have a better camera? How about a family member or a friend? What inducements would be required to get them to photograph your little buddy?
GREAT NEWS INDEED!
Now, you're little 8-legged buddy is going to be giving you pop quizzes daily!
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