she slipped away quietly in the early hours of saturday morning, 22 nov 2008.



she left without saying goodbye. perhaps she thought it was less painful this way. perhaps, because she didn't say goodbye, she is still here by my side, in the air around me.

at this point, i am still unable to put her in the ground where munster lies. she sits here in front of me, seemingly resting. but i know she is no longer in that shell. she will no longer perk up, and peer earnestly at me, or clamber up onto my hand with her furry little paws. she will no longer do her funny little dance that so many of you have come to adore.

she has gone through so much in the past few months. and survived each time like the trooper she was. in time to come, i will list her adventures, in memory of her.

when i wrote for munster, the words flowed freely. words do not flow now, for there are no adequate ones to describe how i feel right now. this was a baby i raised from the day she emerged a newborn spiderling of 2.5mm, to her full adult glory of 1.5 inches. from the very night i picked her out of lucy's litter, she made an impression. she spun the largest and most beautiful hammock i'd ever seen a newborn spideybub spin - not on their first night, not on any night thereafter. her siblings made little haphazard beds out of random silk threads. some even slept standing on the walls.

lucien had a very calm and deliberate nature, that i noticed from her baby days. she never changed. she never panicked. she never rushed about in terror, the way her siblings sometimes would. i also noticed that she was sometimes rather oblivious to things around her... it's almost as if she was frequently daydreaming. perhaps this contributed to her lack of fear. she simply didn't know what fear was all about.

she grew up into the most beautiful spider. countless hours we spent, as she explored her fascinating little world of camera and human hand, nightly for many months. every evening, she did her funny little dance and did the rounds - jumping from hand to camera, camera to hand. it was the most incredible feeling to have her on my hand... this amazing little creature that you've watched grow up bit by bit, pattering on your skin, peering into your eyes.

as she aged, there came the day she lost the ability to walk on the walls. with that, she needed to be fed. i don't know how much bad karma i have earned, but i have crippled many a cricket to feed my little girl. she could no longer jump, with the loss of grip, as she could not launch herself off a surface anymore. she basically had to walk up to a prey and just grab it. when she started to lose fur from the top of her head, the same way her mother did, i knew she was getting really old.

the few times i had her out on my hand again, it pained me to see her aging. she struggled to cling on to my skin, and i would turn my hand so she would always be on top of it. i even managed to stage a few situations for her to jump tiny distances, since she was able to grip very slightly on my skin. i knew she must have missed being able to jump.

and even though she was no longer a good-looking bub or young lady, she would always be my very beautiful baby girl.

two days before her departure, i fed her a concussed cricket as usual. she was rather distracted, and it took a lot of coaxing to get her to grab the prey. five minutes later, i was surprised to see that she had dropped it. she washed her face and wandered around again. it took another bout of coaxing to get her to take the cricket again. five minutes later, she dropped it again. i then thought she might not be hungry. it never occurred to me that it was the first sign that she was fading.

goodbye my little lucien. thank you for being such an amazing spideykid. you have given me so much joy, and so much wonder. at times, there was grief, when i worried for you. but you would always pull through. you have bonded with me in a way i never thought possible. we have had so much good times, you and i. i'm going to miss you so very, very much. and i didn't think i could love a spider this much, but i did... and still do. you have etched yourself so very deeply into my heart, my baby girl. i doubt anyone is ever going to fill the very large shoes you have left behind. all eight of them.

my little movie star, my furry darling, please rest in peace now. please know that i will never stop missing you.

here it is at last. sorry for the delay! :)

and this was what dot was peeping at...



i opened up lucien's jar and joined it with a larger container, similar to the one lucy used to live in. i would sometimes let lucien be in this playpen for a day, every other day. it looked like so much fun, climbing and jumping around. yes, she had enough space to jump!

how i wish i could cure her of her slippery disease.

lucien lives!

*happy dance*

she has lost the second leg on her right, so it's not really obvious unless you count her legs. she was wobbling around at first but seems to have found her footing with her seven legs now. for the first coupla hours, it looked really bad because she wasn't used to the strange sensation of missing a leg - she seemed to have problems controlling all the legs on the right side and would sometimes drag the third leg and fourth leg along instead of stepping. she is walking quite naturally today.

a big thank you to uncle moo and uncle john for the quick response after her accident, and to everyone who has shown concern.

:)

my precious girl has lost a leg. the danger now is that she may bleed to death, because spiders' blood doesn't clot. uncle jeremy says she will be safe if the leg broke cleanly off, if not i have to amputate the remainder... i do see a tiny section but i'm not sure if it's just a protrusion from her body. uncle john said to apply cornflour to the wound to stop the bleeding, which i have done (with slight difficulty... she got so much flour on her it was a little funny despite the grave situation). she has crawled into bed and now i can only hope for the best.

so, what happened was... lucien's siblings have been slowly dying off. scout was the first to go. but that was expected because he seems to have inherited weaker genes from lucy, being the second batch of her kids. he was only half the size of tiga. the next to go was dot. lucien's little sister, whom i actually expected to outlive her, was found on the bottom of her jar, at a precise angle where i couldn't see her. she might have been dead for a coupla days. :( i'd thought she was hiding in her bed during the days when i didn't spot her. after that, tiga started acting funny. he began to have long periods of staring into space. this is one of the first signs of the end. he's still alive now, but has been less and less responsive. i have done a farewell photoshoot of tiga today. i think he will leave us late tonight or tomorrow.

so, with all these in mind, i realise that time waits for no one. if i want lucien to have kids, maybe i shouldn't wait any longer? yesterday, i fed both lucien and her potential bf, pip the pirate boy. first attempt to introduce them had pip seemingly stalk lucien from behind, instead of dancing to get her attention. i panicked and separated them. then i offered  a cricket to pip, who refused it. so he wasn't hungry and trying to stalk lucien to eat her. ok. i thought maybe he was just getting nearer before going about the normal antics. so i put them together again.

lucien is a little blur. she has always been a little blind to certain things. she hardly saw pip at all. pip stalked her again... and then just grabbed her with no warning! they tangled into a ball... and i almost had a heart attack. she flung him off after a gruelling few seconds that seemed like an eternity to me. then i separated them at once.

i didn't see anything amiss until i saw lucien's furry leg. by itself. :o

i checked her at once and saw her with only three legs on one side. it wasn't one of her front legs, so that's a good thing. there was a huge blob of clear blood on the jar where the incident occured, so i freaked out. uncle john said that should be normal... so i'm trying to stop freaking out.

i still can't believe what happened. i'm so upset with myself. i should have taken the first attempt as a sign and stopped there.

my poor little girl.

:(

she's sliding around again today.

:(

guess it was too good to be true. i'll have to build her a new home asap.

somehow, somehow, my little darling recovered overnight.

i'd put her jar by my bed because i was so worried last night. wanted to check on her whenever i happened to wake up. i woke up to the wonderful sight of her, standing on her jar wall, peering right back at me!

what a relief.

i still have absolutely no idea what happened. but i have a coupla theories.

first theory: she has a habit of webbing her jar up excessively. thus, she might have gotten used to walking on webbing. all the kids do it, but she does it the most and the fastest. they do this as a natural reflex, to pin web strings down everywhere they walk. however, because of the confined space, the stray webbing actually irritates them as well. haha. they would get annoyed and rub their legs like someone wiping dust off themselves. anyway, because i can see it annoys them, i would periodically clean off the web-wallpaper from everyone's jar. so perhaps, during the last week, lucien might have gotten more used to the webbing than usual. and when i wiped it off, she suddenly couldn't adjust to the smooth walls. then somehow, overnight, she readjusted.

second theory: she might have been a little spooked by the cricket i offered her. which is weird, because she hadn't eaten in about a week and usually hunts very fast when she is hungry. she refused to hunt or even go near the cricket. her last meal was a mealworm. maybe she'd forgotten how crickets look like? anyway, i wonder if she'd lost her footing because she panicked. at one point, i was holding her jar, and she was floundering around like a fish out of water. that was when my heart broke. she tried to jump onto a wall and fell right back. then she looked up at me helplessly. i felt so, so sad.

in the past, sonic had lost his grip a few months before his passing. he never recovered from it, although it didn't seem to have harmed him in any way. lab also reports that many residents live for many years after they lose their grip.

i was going to build lucien a horizontal home. i think i will do it anyway. she is fine now, but i noticed that she isn't as sure-footed as before. strangely, she seemed to be tripping over the webbed areas today instead.

lucien has lost her grip.

:(

it's heartbreaking to watch her trying not to slide off the walls. she can only hang on to her leaf now. she is thin, yet she won't hunt the cricket offering i've put in. this is not good.

i've only seen male spiders lose their grip so far. i wonder if it's related to their excessive webbing of their surroundings. i have noticed that lucien webs up her jar very much faster than any of her sibs.

i'm thinking up designs for a new horizontal enclosure for her.

so. i tried to get lucien to meet tiga today.

i remember writing about how i didn't want to mate lucien, because i noticed that after they start having bubbas, my girls tend to just become egg-factories until they die. so i was delaying this, even though i could tell lucien has already reached adulthood.

then, one day, i suddenly noticed a very small cluster of eggs. non-viable eggs, obviously, because she has never been with any boy. she guarded them for a day, and then ate them.

i told uncle moo about it and he said she needed to mate. she laid those eggs because she was probably bursting full of eggses. :p

so. it was time for tiga to meet lucien.

yesterday i bought some worms for everyone. this was part of the reason as well - i wanted to stuff them prior to mating, so nobody becomes dinner instead. worms were a good choice, fat and juicy. everyone had one except for bib, who kept hiding in her bed.

today, i offered worms to tiga and lucien again. both of them rejected the offerings. this was my cue to introduce them.

unfortunately, lucien wasn't receptive. :( i have a rather funny video clip of tiga doing his little dance, lucien watching warily, backing off, and then running away!

oh well.

uncle moo says, try again tomorrow.

sigh.

not me.

lucien's sleeping hours are as screwed up as mine.

either that, or she sleepwalks.

possibly both.

hehe!

lucien has got it all figured out.

i've been wondering why she's been less active lately. instead of walking around her jar, like her siblings are doing in theirs, she's been hiding in her newly built, huge hammock. at first i'd thought she was gonna moult again. but she came out and had a cricket meal the other day, and that threw the notion out the window.

she's now hanging out of her hammock, watching. just watching. like a little girl half wrapped in a cosy blanket, watching the world around her.

i reckon she understands her jar space now. she knows that walking around in circles would lead her to nowhere. this is the first time i get the impression that any of the spideykids have ever thought this way, or reached this sort of conclusion.

i wonder if this is even possible, but i can find no other way to explain her behaviour. and from what i've observed of lucien starting from the time she was a mere 2mm infant, she has always displayed superior intelligence and instincts compared to her siblings. the very first night i'd scooped her out of her mother's jar and put her in her own home, little lucien had immediately busied herself spinning a very miniature but amazingly beautiful hammock, in which she slept that very night. her brothers and sisters had either slept on the jar walls, or spun little haphazard hammocks as shelter.

my little genius.

:)

here's lucien's sequel to her superstar debut! more cute flailing of arms, this time in focus. at the end of the movie, she finally reveals exactly what she is trying to do when she flails like that...

comparing lucien's baby pictures and how she is today, she has grown so much! :)



have a good weekend, everyone!

well, choreographed by me.

lucien had pounced on two crickets sitting side by side, in all her magnificence, and stepped away with one in her fangs... leaving the other cricket severely injured and flopping in misery. i ingeniously planted the disabled cricket at the entrance of bib's cocoon, tucking it halfway inside. she eyed it with much suspicion, and tried to prod it away to no avail. then, she went closer and took it in her fangs as if she was taking food off a plate gingerly. hehe. she is now enjoying her free meal from her big sister, in bed.

i'm not sure if i've explained this before, but bib was named for her tendency to drag all her meals into bed when she was an infant. breakfast in bed.

she stopped doing it after like the fifth insect. but here she is, living up to her name again.

:)

prior to these pictures, lucien hadn't been on my hand for about a week, as she was preparing for and carrying out her moult. the first day of her emergence, she was rather shy and stayed in her cocoon for most of the day... until i took her jar in my hand to hold for awhile. i sometimes like to hold the kids' jars to get them used to movements.

the minute i carried lucien's jar, she came out walking right away. after a coupla turns around her little home, she sat down right where my finger pressed against her jar wall. as in, she literally sat by pressing herself down in a resting position as if she was in bed. said bed was, at that moment, directly opposite her in full sight. i was rather happy, and wondered if my efforts in domesticating her has really paid off. she took a nap indirectly on my finger like that, for a long while. i had time to take pictures of her and then wonder what do to next. she woke up from her little nap and walked off only when i moved my finger. :)



isn't my little darling looking more and more like her beautiful mother, lucy? that's lucy in my icon for this entry.

i was only going to post the two pics of her through the jar walls... but couldn't resist sneaking in one gorgeous picture to whet your appetites. as expected, i have loads of awesome pictures of her on my hand. but i shall try to post in some semblance of progression from their early infant days. there will be sneak peeks once in awhile when there are note-worthy bits i feel i have to say, like this one.

;)

lucien has moulted! i've lost track of how many moults she's had, but i think it's the 5th one now. she is HUGE, about twice the size of her little sister dot. which is interesting to note, because all the bubs eat the same food except that lucien readily accepts lots more. i think strong genes and weak genes exist in spiders as well.

i've been looking forward to her having this moult because she's quite a good size and i thought it would be awesome watching her moult. but after spying on her sitting in her bed for a week, she chose to do it this morning when i was knocked out by some medication (to calm the nerves in my ear, apparently. i had a ear problem yesterday). i woke up to see her sprawled out with her new loooong legs, still resting in her cocoon. her bigass exoskeleton was already on the floor.

i was also a little worried that she might get stuck during her moult, since bigger spiders have more trouble. uncle moo says they've had to amputate certain spiderlab residents to save them.

anyways, she's all fine and dandy. :) i can't wait to fatten her up and take more videos of her. still have about 6-8 videos of her on hand right now. i've managed to clear some disk space so i might be able to do up a movie sometime during the week!

:)

i'm so drowning in work. everything is spilling in at the same time. i guess when it rains, it fuckin' pours. i have two projects going on at the same time, and a third from hk waiting for my confirmation. i've not decided if i will take it yet...

next month, one of my bosses is going to meet me to discuss longterm plans. this is something i've been gunning for for the past six months. during this time, i've been working my ass off on everything she has thrown at me. i guess i've passed the test. this is also the reason why i'm not saying yes to the third project yet. i don't want to compromise on the quality of my work.

and also of course, i need some time for my kids. :)

lucien is about to moult again. she's the biggest bub, and the most well-developed one. when i'd first scooped her out of lucy's jar, she was the biggest amongst everyone. that very first night in her own pink jar, she'd spun herself a very large (for a newborn bub) hammock almost immediately. the hammock was amazing well constructed for a newborn bubba. that was when i knew lucien was on to great things. :) she has proved that right. she eats well, and attacks everything with gusto. she is nice and fat, and is so well structured she looks just like a mini-lucy right now. a few days ago, she dragged her old hammock off the ceiling with her fangs. just when i was wondering what she was up to, she started to build herself a little palace, spanning half the height of her entire jar, complete with walkways! i handle her almost everyday, just to see if she can be domesticated, also because she is the most calm of the lot. she now seems to recognise my hand as a safe landing place, where she doesn't hesitate to jump on. she is currently standing at 2cm, including leg-span. i can't wait to see how big she gets after this next moult. :)

next biggest bub is bib. bib is sporting girl-colours but behaving more like a boy - less enthused about food and spooks very easily. problem child, this one. i believe she's a girl though, the colours can't be wrong. bib has a strange habit of eating in the night. she would run away from the frisky food all day. then at night, when i sometimes sneak a peek at them sleeping, she would be standing outside her bed, with the frisky food in her fangs. she is much less developed than lucien, due to her irregular meals and intake of nutrients.

tiga is a boy! my first confirmed boy. :) his previous moult was the one that did the trick - previously they all looked the same, with baby-colours. then one time, he took a really long time to moult. he was hiding for about a full week before finally moulting. rested in his bed for a day and a night. the next morning, i woke up to find him hiding on the floor behind his water filter - with the other bubs standing on their walls and staring at him! haha. it was rather funny. but i knew he was scared stiff and now everyone gets a paper divider between their homes. he was so obviously a boy and i knew immediately that bib was a girl (i was suspecting bib to be a boy because of her strange behaviour). tiga is almost 80% jet black, with obvious boy palps (those little 'arms' that they wipe their fangs and face with). he has been eating quite well, compared to bib, and sports a nice fat tummy. when he grows bigger, he will gradually stop getting so fat, as boys are usually skinnier. i shall be trying to fatten him as much as possible as a bubba, to get him to grow to his maximum size.

dot is having her first day out after her recent moult, and her first meal as well. she's sporting lucy colours and looks very much like lucien's little sister. :) dot is a little like missy (munster's girl), a little prissy and is a little temperamental, but hunts well when she feels like it. but she is eating well compared to bib.

last bubba is scout, from lucy's second clutch of bubs (the other four are from the first clutch). scout moulted last night, and i think he's a boy. because i have tiga as a reference, even though scout is still very very small compared to the rest, i can tell by his palps that he's going to take after tiga, even though he is still sporting baby-colours. previously, it was impossible for me to tell the gender at a stage where scout is currently at. now i know. :)

i believe changing their diet has also made a tremendous difference. i'd been trying to hunt down pinhead crickets for the longest time (a few months) to no avail. the ones in the pet shops are humongous and would probably eat my bubs instead. besides, they really freak me out because they look just like roaches. finally, i put my foot down on the situation by getting my nephew to drive me out to the farms in pasir ris. got a few strange looks - what are two people in a flashy sports car doing in lalaland over there? we went door to door till we found a cricket farm, which was actually only the third place we tried. there were millions of crickets there! and of all sizes too! there was a lady feeding the cricks and i asked to buy a small amount of pinheads. she said, "how about 50?". I said, "okay!". she went and scooped about 200 pinheads from the nearest tank! i objected... and she was like, "it's okay, i give you all for $2". i guess it was more troublesome for her to pour them back.

so, i had shitloads of cricks. hansel made sure i tied the bag well before we got back into the car. haha. anyway, to cut a long story short(er), this was the best $2 i've ever spent. cricks are great as food because i can gut-load them with good nutritious stuff (carrot, oatmeal, crushed corn). i believe that's what's making my kids develop well. especially obvious with scout - at this stage of growth, i shouldn't be able to guess the gender yet.

the only problem the cricks have given me, was the one time they all busted out of the bag. haha. it was a disaster. for a whole month, they'd lived in the bag obediently, only to chew a hole through the bottom on the one night i'd gone out for dinner. goddammit. i was home for almost a whole month working, and they chose that very night when i wasn't home. mother rang me halfway through dinner and we laughed so hard i could hardly eat. friends are convinced that the cricks had planned the whole thing. salsarina came home with me to help hunt down the naughty escapees. the hunt lasted till 1am.

that brings us up to speed on the current situation with lucy's kids. pictures (lots of them) to come when i'm breathing easier after this weekend's submission.

:)

so... there are shitloads of stuff that should have been posted between this and the last spideykids update. but that's gonna take too long so i'm just gonna post the very first spideykid movie and then slowly fill in the blanks afterwards. :) a quick run-down of the current fambly: i have five of lucy's bubbas (four from her first clutch, one from her second. uncle john adopted three and the rest have been returned to mother nature), four of munster's bubbas (there were five but max, the only boy, died. current bubs now are min, poof, flynn and missy. almost adults now), three bobbies and one bobbette (not the same ones from last year), three plexippus adults (two girls, one boy. plexippus are a size between lucy and munster).

ok, that wasn't such a short run-down after all. :)

all my original spideykids from last year have passed on and gone to spidey heaven. slash and lucy left me on the very same day, one in the morning and one in the evening. bobbette was the last adult to pass on. everyone is buried under the same tree, where munster lies.

it has been a wonderful 2007 with them. :)

the bulk of my attention is now on raising lucy's bubbas, which are very much less hardy than munster's kids. they are also turning out to be a joy to handle. especially lucien, lucy's biggest little girl. :) my little movie star.





i pulled away when she was flailing her arms because it seemed like she was trying to grab the lens. but i realised after a few shoots that she was doing something else. all shall be explained when new footage is uploaded. yes, i caught her doing funny stuff. hehe. uncle moo says she looks like a baby wanting hugs when she flails like that. :)

my old ibook didn't enjoy editing the movie. i'm going to try to hold off making more till i get a new machine soon. meanwhile, new spidey movies might still magically appear (especially after i happen to visit friends).

ps. photobucket's video streaming sucks donkeys' balls.