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- 9
I recently got into the "Tarantula Life"...
After working 70 hour work weeks for nearly 15 years I took 8 months off and finished the restoration on my '66 Buick and found a local job here in Tucson AZ (the home of Ken the Bug Guy). Being semi-retired now, only working 40 hours a week
and done with my big project finishing my car that I started work on in in 1997 I discovered that I needed a new hobby. Preferably not one that takes tens of thousands of US Dollars and years of my time. One of my new coworkers is a Tarantula Keeper and gave me a young AZ Blond. I named the little 1.5 inch guy George (I don't know the gender yet though) and was immediately hooked.
My last project:
My current Project: The Wall of 56 Eyes (More coming soon)
My first T, George. Here she/he is enjoying a little spa time drinking like a boss out of a small water bottle cap:
My second T Rosy who is a Salmon Pink Bird Eater is showing off at the front of her den that I made for her. The den is a bit too big for her right now I think, but I am quite sure she will grow into it. In this pic she is showing what I think of as Hunting behavior. If I drop a cricket in there when she is sitting there she WILL eat it, if she is further back in her den then she will ignore any food I put in with her. In the background you can see the ZooMed micro heating pad I installed to keep her tank at 77F. My wife likes to keep the house at sub zero temps. I installed the heating pads on all the tanks with a rheostat for each and I check the temps twice a day with a laser thermometer.
My third and fourth Ts are another AZ Blond (Sasha) and a GBB named Jade. Here they are on my way home from Ken The Bug Guy's store here in Tucson AZ:
More of Jade:
Just after her molt: (I didn't even notice that she had just molted when I started cleaning her tank. Had I noticed I would have waited a week before "bugging" her)
Here is Sasha chilling out in her den that I made her:
Sasha chilling out in my hand:
The next three I got from an estate sale. Their keeper is no longer with us, but his pets have found a new home and I hope to be able to provide the level of care that he would have wanted.
The first is a Mexican Red Knee that my wife named Ruby:
Here is her tank as it stands now, I have made a clay burrow for all the new ladies but it takes a few weeks for them to dry out enough to fire them and then seal them. When their new burrows are ready I will update their pics if you folks are interested.
The next one is Penelope, a Chilean Rose. She has a VERY sweet disposition and seems to like to be handled. When my wife puts her hand in the tank Pen will walk over and sit on her hand (even after I got the tank heater set up).
The last of the new guys is another AZ Blond, she also has a very sweet disposition:
The variations between the AZ Blonds is very interesting. My first one is captive bred but comes from local stock, while Pen is wild caught from the Grand Canyon area. There was a fourth spider in the estate sale, another AZ Blond from captive bred from stock taken from Payson AZ (about half way between Tucson and the Grand Canyon). She went to my coworker who got me started with Tarantulas.
If you look close you can see red markings on PB's abdomen, really pretty:
To complete out the picture of my Zoo I will include the fact that we are the unofficial western hub of the Hermitage no kill cat shelter and we often end up fostering very young kittens that still need bottle feeding. Out of the 130 or so that we have fostered 11 have stuck. Most of those that have stayed are older cats or ones that need on going medical care making them less adoptable. We also have two rescued dogs and a ferret. It's a darn good thing that I have a 2500 sq ft house and all the kids but one have left the nest.
Here is 8 of them having Noms on my kitchen counter. My wife was amused by doing this, I was much less so...
After working 70 hour work weeks for nearly 15 years I took 8 months off and finished the restoration on my '66 Buick and found a local job here in Tucson AZ (the home of Ken the Bug Guy). Being semi-retired now, only working 40 hours a week
and done with my big project finishing my car that I started work on in in 1997 I discovered that I needed a new hobby. Preferably not one that takes tens of thousands of US Dollars and years of my time. One of my new coworkers is a Tarantula Keeper and gave me a young AZ Blond. I named the little 1.5 inch guy George (I don't know the gender yet though) and was immediately hooked.My last project:
My current Project: The Wall of 56 Eyes (More coming soon)
My first T, George. Here she/he is enjoying a little spa time drinking like a boss out of a small water bottle cap:
My second T Rosy who is a Salmon Pink Bird Eater is showing off at the front of her den that I made for her. The den is a bit too big for her right now I think, but I am quite sure she will grow into it. In this pic she is showing what I think of as Hunting behavior. If I drop a cricket in there when she is sitting there she WILL eat it, if she is further back in her den then she will ignore any food I put in with her. In the background you can see the ZooMed micro heating pad I installed to keep her tank at 77F. My wife likes to keep the house at sub zero temps. I installed the heating pads on all the tanks with a rheostat for each and I check the temps twice a day with a laser thermometer.
My third and fourth Ts are another AZ Blond (Sasha) and a GBB named Jade. Here they are on my way home from Ken The Bug Guy's store here in Tucson AZ:
More of Jade:
Just after her molt: (I didn't even notice that she had just molted when I started cleaning her tank. Had I noticed I would have waited a week before "bugging" her)
Here is Sasha chilling out in her den that I made her:
Sasha chilling out in my hand:
The next three I got from an estate sale. Their keeper is no longer with us, but his pets have found a new home and I hope to be able to provide the level of care that he would have wanted.
The first is a Mexican Red Knee that my wife named Ruby:
Here is her tank as it stands now, I have made a clay burrow for all the new ladies but it takes a few weeks for them to dry out enough to fire them and then seal them. When their new burrows are ready I will update their pics if you folks are interested.
The next one is Penelope, a Chilean Rose. She has a VERY sweet disposition and seems to like to be handled. When my wife puts her hand in the tank Pen will walk over and sit on her hand (even after I got the tank heater set up).
The last of the new guys is another AZ Blond, she also has a very sweet disposition:
The variations between the AZ Blonds is very interesting. My first one is captive bred but comes from local stock, while Pen is wild caught from the Grand Canyon area. There was a fourth spider in the estate sale, another AZ Blond from captive bred from stock taken from Payson AZ (about half way between Tucson and the Grand Canyon). She went to my coworker who got me started with Tarantulas.
If you look close you can see red markings on PB's abdomen, really pretty:
To complete out the picture of my Zoo I will include the fact that we are the unofficial western hub of the Hermitage no kill cat shelter and we often end up fostering very young kittens that still need bottle feeding. Out of the 130 or so that we have fostered 11 have stuck. Most of those that have stayed are older cats or ones that need on going medical care making them less adoptable. We also have two rescued dogs and a ferret. It's a darn good thing that I have a 2500 sq ft house and all the kids but one have left the nest.
Here is 8 of them having Noms on my kitchen counter. My wife was amused by doing this, I was much less so...
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