Finished

Okay... so I'm lazy and don't like taking the time to double-post here from Dreamwidth, and having to fight with this site's crappy layout and stuff. From this day forth (how serious!) all posts for Mazes of the Mind will be made at http://spiderwoman.dreamwidth.org/ and nowhere else. This archive will be kept open, since there's stuff I still like referencing, but no longer will I be posting here. Cheers!

Tarantulas everywhere!

This post shall solely be dedicated to tarantulas! Now I've mentioned my spiders before I believe, and up until this morning, I only had two tarantula spiderlings. My first was Thor, was Grammostola pulchripes (formerly aureostriata), and my second was Pumpkin, my Pamphobeteus sp. "platyomma".

These are some before and after shots of Thor, after he molted. Left is before, right is after.
He's paler in the right photo because he hadn't quite hardened completely yet.


And this is a photo of Pumpkin, which I took about a week before he molted.
Eventually I'll get around to taking descent photos of him now that he's larger.

I get my little darlings from Tarantula Canada, run by two awesome people in Montreal, Amanda Gollaway and Martin Gamache. Anyhow, I'd made an order for two more little spiderlings, and they were to arrive yesterday morning. But something went horribly wrong. Somewhere along the line, Canada Post managed to lose the package with my two live tarantulas. Yes. They lost live animals in the mail.

So as you can imagine, I called up my breeders to find out why my package had not arrived, as it was supposed to arrive by noon yesterday. And this is how I found that out. But Amanda was wonderful. She took care of business and told me she would have two new T's sent to me the next day, this time via UPS. Well this morning at quarter to 9AM, my doorbell rang, and it was the UPS guy with my box of tarantulas, yay!

And to my pleasant surprise, there were more than just my two originally ordered tarantulas in there! There were another two that Amanda had sent along for free in compensation the time I lost taking it off work the day prior and just the hassle in general. Tarantula Canada is a very well run business and the people who run it are dedicated and do their best to make certain their spiders arrive alive and healthy, and that their customers are happy and satisfied. I'm definitely going to keep purchasing my T's from them in the future.

But anyhow... Here are some photos I took this morning, upon receiving the package with my new babies.

Those small containers are what the tarantula spiderlings come packed in.
The gauze is kept damp, and the spiderlings are delicately folded inside and packed into the container.


This is my Grammostola rosea, isn't he absolutely tiny and adorable? I had originally made an order for this one.


And this is another Grammostola rosea, but this time of the red colour form, another 'sling I had originally intended to purchase.


This is a Brachypelma vagans, one of the free spiderlings I was sent for my troubles.

And this tiny little dear (even smaller than the first G. rosea, believe it or not) is a  Nhandu coloratovillosus,
the other free tarantula I was lucky enough to receive.


This is the shelf upon which I currently house all my spiders. The largest container doesn't house a tarantula however, it holds my female wolf spider, Fluffy. Pumpkin's container is the hexagon shaped one in the back. All the others hold smaller spiderlings.

It's actually kind of funny, because I only just received my first spiderling tarantula (Thor) in January of this year. In 6 months I've managed to collect 5 more tarantulas haha... and lord knows how many more I'll wind up with someday! At the moment I'm a little concerned, because both my N. coloratovillus and my regular G. rosea are very, very small. Their size in itself isn't a problem, but feeding them certainly is. My Thor is a good 4 times their size and even he can't yet consume live crickets, not even pinheads. I have to feed him cricket larvae instead. I'm just wondering if I'll be able to find larvae for all 5 of them, or if the red G. rosea and the B. vagans might be willing to eat pinhead crickets, unlike Thor. It's all a little worrisome, anyway.

But anyhow... if any of you are wondering what my little ones will look like full grown... here are some photos, care of Tarantula Canada!
 

This is a female Grammostola pulchripes, Thor's species. The males look the same if slightly slimmer.

This is what Pumpkin, my Pamphobeteus sp. "platyomma" will look like if a female.


But if male... he will grow up to look like this!


My Grammostola rosea will grow up to look like this if male, and slightly less furry and less bright if female.


I.E. more like this if it's a girl.


My red colour form G. rosea will turn out like this. The females look the same, but are bulkier.


My Brachypelma vagans will grow up into this if female, and simply leaner and longer legged if male.


And finally, my Nhandy coloratovillosus will look like this if female.


And like this if male.
 

Anyhow... it's crazy hot, and I'd like to have some ice cream before bed. That, and I want to try and feed my Nhandu coloratovillosus a small larvae I have, before the thing gets too big to eat haha... Cheers!

 

 

Pumpkin Molted! (and older un-posted post)

I got home from work Friday to discover that my Pamphobeteus sp. "platyomma" tarantula, Pumpkin, had molted during the day! This makes me terribly happy. He'd only molted a month ago and has already molted again. He's grown a good 1/2 inch with this molt. Just to show you how much he's grown between this molt and the last...

The one of the left is obviously the one from Friday and the smaller one is from a month ago. The difference is huge, isn't it? It's amazing how that larger form was squashed inside that smaller one. Spiders are such crazy awesome creatures.

I'm very excited about getting my two new T's on Tuesday, too. They're both Grammostola rosea, although one of them is the red colour form. So instead of being the typical pink/brown, it's red. I'm most likely going to take a bizzilion photos when they get here, so you'll get a good look at my next little lieblings.

I'm also pondering getting another cat. I'm away from home a lot and I don't like leaving my poor cat alone at home so much. I think he's lonely because he's so desperately happy when I get home in the evening, and so afraid that I'm going to leave when I do. Poor little guy. If I do get a cat though, I am not getting a kitten. As adorable as they are, they are a load of work. Not to mention insane balls of psychotic energy. And I live in a small apartment and would really rather not have a kamakaze kitten ruling the roost. If I do get another cat, it'll be an adult cat that someone can't keep any longer. I was thinking shelter cat, but I really don't want to have to pay $175 for what someone will give me for free. There are plenty of people giving away adult cats though, fixed and everything, often with supplies. Either because of allergies or new babies or whatnot.

We'll see though... taking on another cat is a helluva bigger investment - money, space, effort and time-wise - than my other pets are so I'm going to be putting a lot of thought into this before doing anything. There is one cat I spotted on Kijiji that got my attention, but I still think it's too early for me to really be able to tell if I want to adopt him and bring another cat home just yet.

And in non-pet related news, I am being driven insane by my friend. It is affecting me a helluva lot more than I thought it would. I'm constantly grumpy or in a bad mood simply because he's here. It looks like he's leaving on Thursday though, so a whole week ahead of what was expected... Still not soon enough for me though. Eh well. I learned my lesson.

I still managed to have a good weekend though. Friday night I went to the Lookout for Girl's night with my girlfriends and we danced and drank and had a great time. I even wore my super high heels out, which was nice. I like dressing up. Saturday I only got up at 2pm haha... I had my friend Tina over for supper and made some chicken and shrimp curries, and that night we were supposed to go to the Lookout again for Drag night, but there was oddly enough, a cover. And since there usually isn't and neither of us wanted to pay... we skipped out haha... We wound up walking down the canal and just talking. It was so nice out, we didn't really mind.

Today I did some cleaning, finished two books I had been reading (In Search of the Old Ones, and The Funny Thing is) and tried not to freak out on my friend. Speaking of which... I'm going to finish this and do some more reading before I cave to the urge to strangle him. Ugh.

(old post)

Temporary room mate

posted by spiderwoman at 09:54am on 19/06/2009 under friends, heat, spiders, tarantulas, weather

Yep... the girl who couldn't wait to live alone went and agreed to someone bunking on her couch. It's for a week or two... until July 2nd the latest. My friend got kicked out by his girlfriend after they broke up and he needed somewhere to stay until he could move into his apartment on the 2nd. And because I'm a nice and stupid person, I offered my couch up. Durh.

He hasn't been there for an entire day yet and I already miss my privacy. Feh. I don't mind him... I just... mind not having my space. And he seems to keep trying to be polite by conversing with me whenever we're both there, and well... I just want to continue living in my home like I did when he wasn't there. I'm not his host, he's not my guest... he's sleeping on my couch. Bah. I'm weird. But this is the last time I do this.

In more YAY news, I'm getting two more tarantulas! A Grammostola rosea, and a Grammostola rosea of the red colour form. Two little 1/2" spiderlings which will be arriving Tuesday morning. Ah I'm so excited! More little darlings to love!

Plus my father says that he caught two more large spiders and is keeping them for me until they either come to Ottawa or I go visit them. Ah, my little zoo, it is expanding!

It finally feels like summer out. And by that, I mean ridiculously, unbearably hot and humid. Ah, summer in North Ontario. Oh well... I'd rather be hot than cold I suppose.

Anyhow, there's some stuff I should probably get done here at work... Cheers!

My weekend and moar!

Okay! This post is going to be text light and photo heavy... because I am lazy and I just want to get it done already! Okay! Here goes!

So Friday I came home, and since I didn't have enough laundry to bother going to the laundromat, I chilled for a bit, made myself some sweet and sour chicken balls and shrimp, and some salad for supper. Then I biked out to Dow's Lake and sat around for wee bit, admiring the water and the birds. I wrote a wee poem in my new notebook too, which you can find here.

On Saturday I met up with my friends Tina and Dustin, and we walked off to the Art in the Park, or as they called it this year, The New Art Festival. It was very hoity toity, and everything cost ridiculously too much, although some of the stuff was pretty nice. Oh... and on the walk over... we saw this amazing truck... I wish they made men like they used to make trucks!

Isn't it gorgeous?!

And here with Dustin's Low Rider bike... beautiful truck!

Awesome metal fishy!

These made me laugh... little leather holsters for inhalers!


The guy carved this with a chainsaw!




If I had had the $200 to spare, I would have taken this home!


Metal Moose!

So yeah, that was the outdoor art show... after that I parted with Tina and Dustin. I did some groceries, because it was just so beautiful out and it was an excuse to go out walking. Then I went biking again, back out to Dow's Lake and up the Rideau Canal to a set of locks. It was absolutely beautiful that evening, and I got some amazing photos.

Looks like I'm standing on the water doesn't it?


I was actually standing on this tree!


See? Haha... I kept worrying I would fall in XD




And then I came upon the locks!






Hurr, mah foot! I was surprised they let us so close to the edge unsupervised.
Doesn't look it, but that,s a good 15 foot drop into the water below.


Crossing one of the lock gates... see the different water levels?


And the view from on it.


And the beautiful view of the canal on the lowest gate on the way back home...

So yes! That was Saturday! And then yesterday we (Tina, Dustin and I) went to this open house thing in one of the Agricultural buildings and looked at some of their framed bug collection. That's where I got to hold the Rose Hair tarantula. I was a little upset though, because the man handling her and letting people hold her had no idea what species she was or anything about them at all!

I spotted it, and knew instantly that it was a Grammostola Rosea (one of my Thor's cousins actually) and asked him, just to be certain, and the guy said he didn't know. Then he said it was a 2 years old female, and she would live another 2-3 years. Bull shit. G. rosea females can live up to 30 years! I've seen females of the species older than I am! And when another woman asked him if they were very quick, he again said he didn't know. I really don't think this man should have been in charge of that tarantula. He was indangering it, letting children hold it over the floor. Had it fallen, it would almost certainly have died a horrible death. I was not pleased by that. People are just not responsible, and don't seem to care about the animals under their care.

Anyway, that's my little spider rant.

I went biking again last evening. And stopped to pet some little baby goslings on the side of the bike path.

Aw, aren't they cute? Getting their adult plumage soon.

Aaand a video of me being a total dork with said goslings... hah!

And yes... that was my weekend. In biiiig picture style. I went biking again today, but it wasn't as nice out. Cloudy and windy and a little chill. But eh. I'm happy because my buddy Jesse says he'll be going to Motion Notion now, so I'll get to see him there! For a while it looked like he wasn't going.

Anyhow... I should get to bed and whatnot... work in the morning and all that.

Oh but before I go... a friend of mine just re-opened a new account on Deviant Art, and I really think you should check his stuff out! He used to go by the name kombat-unit there, but now is known as torture-device. He does some really awesome if somewhat disturbing artwork. Certainly something to check out if you don't mind blood and guts and the occasional swastika.

Cheers!