A Fuzzy New Pet

 We've been warned repeatably that our three-year-long drought is going to continue bone-dry right on through our totally failing monsoon season, and our temperature would be up in the three-digits every day. Well, it's 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon and it is 73 degrees, and this is the first time in the past three days that it has finally stopped raining. We can't go to our beautiful park for our pre-breakfast walk because water is crossing the roads and there's no way to get through. If this was the turn the weather was going to take you think we would be thrilled and relieved. The truth is we are getting fed up with the soggy gloom.

I would probably be sitting in the house getting bored if it wasn't that I had a new pet.

Now I know it seems like I only write about poisonous snakes and scorpions and never write about fuzzy and furry creatures. But I'm not always like that. We found this new, very fuzzy and furry creature, or rather, our cat found it for us, walking down the hall, and we grabbed it for our own.

This is the Desert Blond Tarantula, a symbol of the Arizona desert. Full grown, the species has a four-inch leg span. When you see them wandering the roads at night it is generally an adult male searching for a female, and mating will be his last act. He literally gives it his all. I have occasionally brought one home but they don't eat and they just die. The females live for a much longer time, but they are harder to find. You don't find them wandering. They stay home in their burrow and wait for the male to come by.

Well, I really don't know how you sex them, but I believe this a female, and better still, I think it is only half grown, So I might be able to keep this one as long as I want. (I have looked it up, and the oldest one on record lived 49 years. Maybe I better think through this; I might have to remember this one in my will.

I have kept a solefugid (another exotic arachnid) for a pet, and they are fairly easy, because they will eat meal worms. The one I had lived for about a year, which may be their life span. I have kept a few scorpions for pets, but often had trouble getting them to eat, and I have had to let them go. That's what I did with my bark scorpion. and I still miss it. Anyway, getting this one to eat was the first concern.

Heather, my daughter-in-law, went to the pet store and got me a packet of baby crickets. We poured them all into the aquarium. Now, there is another slight problem with tarantulas, and that is, they come out at night in the darkness, which can make them problematic to observe. I had about two inches of gravel in the bottom of the tank, and I had put in a square piece of bark, knowing the tarantula would want something to hide under during the day, and it has now dug out a hole beneath the piece of bark. That's where it was hiding out when we poured in the crickets. The next morning I looked in and there were only two or three crickets left. Now, did they bury themselves in the gravel? Did the tarantula eat them all in one wild gorge? If it ate them all, it was in the dark so we did not see it.

That was not very satisfying. So we went back to the pet store and bought some big half-grown crickets. The next morning I looked in, and noticed that the spider was still out from his hideaway (is it taming down?), and though we did not see it make a kill, there were scattered parts of slaughtered crickets strewn about, and there it was holding one while s/he devoured it.

 

So I would not have to turn it loose out of guilt that I was starving it. And anyway, I have just now read that their metabolism is so low that they can go months, if not years, without eating a bite.

This blog is dedicated to my good friend Carter Patteson.