Creepy crawly pets

Chew Toy McCoy

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Here's some of my jumping spiders, female brown and male black. They are very smart and curious and the eyes just kill me.

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Alli

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Those are my favorite! We have them everywhere, and they are what got me over my dislike of spiders.

Husband just came in with a photo of a new orb spinner, Soo they're back. I'll try too get some photos next time there's a break in the rain.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I use this app to ID insects. You just take a picture or point it to a picture you already took and it gives you its best guess ID. It’s been pretty accurate for me. In some cases it gives you runner up options you can change it too.

 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Those are my favorite! We have them everywhere, and they are what got me over my dislike of spiders.

Husband just came in with a photo of a new orb spinner, Soo they're back. I'll try too get some photos next time there's a break in the rain.


I just found out about jumping spiders about a year ago. I didn't know how prolific the species is, can be found everywhere except Antarctica. Most of the pictures above are spiders I bought online, but the last picture is of one I caught at work a couple of months ago. They are easy to handle and aren't prone to biting, only if they feel they are about to get mushed. If they do bite it would at worst be like a bee sting.

I love orb weaver spiders, the bigger the better.
 

Alli

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I just found out about jumping spiders about a year ago.

I had one that kept jumping in bed with me one night. I would pick him up and put him on the night stand, and he'd just jump right back into the bed. They're too small to cuddle, and I didn't want to feel his little legs all night long. It was also too late for me to get up and put him outside, which I would normally have done. It did not end well.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I had one that kept jumping in bed with me one night. I would pick him up and put him on the night stand, and he'd just jump right back into the bed. They're too small to cuddle, and I didn't want to feel his little legs all night long. It was also too late for me to get up and put him outside, which I would normally have done. It did not end well.

Great story until the end. :( Maybe next time put an upside-down cup over it until you can put it safely elsewhere. I have a ridiculous amount of small critter containers (different size deli cups with vented lids) I have at home, work, and our cabin. I just realized I should probably keep a couple in my car!

I also caught a female jumping spider at work but she’s too small for my camera tech to get a good picture. In fact, before I grabbed her I first took a picture and then pinch zoomed it to confirm my suspicion it was a jumping spider.
 

jkcerda

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little ones I can handle, hate black widows. I stopped stomping on them a few years ago and now take them out of the office in a sheet of paper when they get past the door.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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little ones I can handle, hate black widows. I stopped stomping on them a few years ago and now take them out of the office in a sheet of paper when they get past the door.

We sometimes get roaches in our office at work. Not because the place is filthy, but more because there are gaps at the bottom of the entrance doors they can easy crawl under to get inside. If nobody is around when I see one I’ll usually bundle them in a paper towel and put them back outside away from the office.
 

jkcerda

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We sometimes get roaches in our office at work. Not because the place is filthy, but more because there are gaps at the bottom of the entrance doors they can easy crawl under to get inside. If nobody is around when I see one I’ll usually bundle them in a paper towel and put them back outside away from the office.
we get lizards /bugs/ spiders. the door sometimes stays just a hair open .
 

lizkat

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How about imaginary predators? Painting eyes on the behinds of cattle has apparently deterred predators like lions and leopards.

 

Chew Toy McCoy

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How about imaginary predators? Painting eyes on the behinds of cattle has apparently deterred predators like lions and leopards.


Reminds me how in some places where there are tigers people will wear face masks on the back of their head to make the tiger think they’ve been spotted.

Kind of funny you can ward off some apex predators just by making eye contact.
 

lizkat

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Reminds me how in some places where there are tigers people will wear face masks on the back of their head to make the tiger think they’ve been spotted.

Kind of funny you can ward off some apex predators just by making eye contact.

I wouldn't mind finding out if this works on black bears. I'm always wondering when I will have annoyed a black bear that may have been reconnoitering status of blackberries in the bushes just behind the place next door. I try to keep that bounty-giving briarpatch cut way back some years... but then the appeal of their fruit rises to memory, stays my hand and in a couple more years I'm back to wondering if I'm going to be greeted by a bear on my return from the road while I'm carrying nothing but a now pretty flimsy local newspaper and some junkmail.

But getting back to creepy crawly "friends"... I'm usually more sensibly minding whether or not I've picked up any deer ticks after traipsing through the grass to the road in flip flops instead of boots sprayed with supposed chemical deterrents. Too many friends and some kin have been stricken with chronic Lyme.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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This is one of my favorite spiders, although not available in the pet trade in the US I believe. Not only does it look horrifically badass (like a human skull fused on to a spider - so metal), but it also weaves a net that it holds and then casts down on its prey. Awesome.

Side note: Great youtube channel for short hilarious animal documentaries.

 
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lizkat

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This is one of my favorite spiders, although not available in the pet trade in the US I believe. Not only does it look horrifically badass (like a human skull fused on to a spider - so metal), but it also weaves a net that it holds and then casts down on its prey. Awesome.

Side note: Great youtube channel for short hilarious animal documentaries.



Imagine if in their evolution, those spiders are very slowly "discovering" that it's adaptively beneficial for their species to end up much, much bigger. Their abilities already seem beyond the imaginative powers behind most sci-fi movies.
 

Thomas Veil

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Many, many moons ago when our son was a teenager, he kept a snake in the house. This was without my permission as I’m afraid of and loathe the damn things.

But against my better wishes and to keep the peace, I left the matter alone, with his assurances that it could not get out of its tank.














Until it did.

It of course pushed the poorly secured lid up and slithered out.

I only found out about it days later when my wife told me. She’d kept its escape to herself for a while knowing I’d freak. And also do an I Told You So.

So long story short, our son had been looking for the snake, but not finding it, he did what teenagers do: he lost interest in it. The snake doesn’t turn up anywhere and gradually our nervousness goes away. Weeks turn into months. Pages fly off the calendar, until after six months we figure the thing died somewhere of starvation and we’ll find it someday when we clean out the closet in his room or something.

So one day our other son goes into the basement to do his weekly laundry, which goes down a clothes chute from upstairs. He picks up a pile of clothes from the basement floor and does an Olympic-level backwards long jump when he finds the snake under it.

I wasn’t there, thank god, to see any of this. Nor did we ever figure out how the snake got from his room on the second floor, down to the basement without anyone seeing it. But our older son picked up the snake and returned it to its (now more secure) tank.

Ugh. I’m with Indiana Jones on this one. I hate snakes.
 
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