i did a tiga shoot. videos and peektures. :)

i've not had tiga out on my hand for a long time because he has become so jittery as a big boy. both my boys, scout and tiga, move in a jerky, nervous manner, unlike the girls. i notice that this is true for all the jumping spiders i've had in my care.

strangely though, tiga was the bubba i'd shot the most when they were all bubs. this was, of course, before their gender became apparent. as a baby, tiga had also once snuggled up in the middle of my palm, along a little fleshy ridge, and fallen right asleep. the icon for this entry was snapped when he was napping. :)

when he started to grow into a big boy, the naturally nervous nature of males also began to show.

the last shoot i did of him on my hand was when he first got his black colours. he still had his little tufts of hair then. he looked like a cute little devil. :) but another moult later, his devil horns came right off with his exoskeleton, and i suddenly found myself looking at a gorgeous specimen of the male hyllus diardi. hyllus diardi boys are so uncommon and rarely documented, and very little is known of them. the girls are so often photographed by nature enthusiasts, i guess because they're so much less shy and easier to spot.

so. i've always wanted to do a shoot of tiga on my hand again. but i was so scared of losing him. now that all my bubbas are so big, their jumping prowess is also quite something. i thought about it all day today, and i'm not sure what made me decide to do it, but i did.

he refused to budge, at first. he hid in his bed and peeked at me in such a cute and shy manner that i almost dropped the idea. but he has been less nervous these days, and i knew there was no better time to do it.

so i gently brushed one of his web strings from afar, enough to alarm him only slightly so he'd move but not panic. i wasn't sure how readily he'd move onto my hand, because i knew that unlike lucien, he seems afraid of this 'fleshy' texture, even though he'd been so comfortable with it as a baby.

he prodded me tentatively twice and walked onto my hand! but before i could get too happy, he freaked out and leapt off onto my desk. i picked him back up and he leapt off onto my desk again, and then onto the floor! it was the furthest any kid has ever got to.

i picked him back up again, and he calmed down finally.

so, after our first few seconds of panic (both him and i), we got re-acquainted with each other. he re-explored the hand he used to know so well, and there were no more attempts to be superspidey. he was a good boy and just wandered around on my hand, albeit slightly jerkily. i managed to get three short clips of him, which i didn't expect to. all i wanted was at least one good photograph. i got a few. :)

i shall leave you all in suspense and post the pictures another day. ha!

:)

i know i'm so terrible, but i just wanted to record this moment. i still want to post their pics in progression. i know! there has been such slow progress... one day, one day we will get there!

just so i seem a little less terrible, i'm working on a korean fantasy epic right now for work. it's pretty hardcore translating stuff that don't exist. will lose a bit of hair over the next two months i reckon!

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...

i have a dilemma.

lucy's kids are now ready to move into bigger homes. they've outgrown their pink baby jars, and are now bigger than ever. lucien is almost lucy-sized, and tiga is rather errrm enthusiastic whenever he gets a whiff of the girls.

they grow up so fast. *sniff*

the thing is, they're still happy in their pink baby homes. they'll always be my babies. :) what's also holding me back is that i don't want them to start hiding from me. the initial plan was to move them into bigger jars with nice plastic greenery like their mother lucy had. i reckon the bubs don't hide from me now because there is nowhere to hide. hehe. okay, sadistic tendencies aside, these bubbas have been raised domestically. the nature of this species in the wild is to hide and hide and then hide some more. i have an inkling that once i put them in their natural (or whatever comes close) habitat, they will slip into their wild ways. i remember watching lucy perched on a branch all day, staying absolutely still thinking she was invisible, moving only when it was dusk (which gave her like an hour to walk around before it got too dark).

lucy was a wild child and it couldn't be helped. but her babies are not!

they walk around and watch me, like munster used to do. bib still startles easiest, with the boys, tiga and scout, on par in second place. so i have a little paper partition where my hands move the most on my ibook, and they seem happy with this arrangement. lucien has an almost full view of me, her jar being right next to me on my desk. she peers at everything i do, and is more curious than afraid of my movements.

i'm happy with them being like this. i don't want them to suddenly become afraid of everything.

i will chew on it some more.

making icons is addictive! especially when you have cute subjects! i made a whole bunch in one sitting! must make myself stop for now!

!!!

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.

:)

tiga is out from a fresh moult and he is HUGE! :D i just gave him a 3-course cricket meal and he has two in his fangs at once. :D he's almost the same size as lucien (usually boys are much smaller). must be all the cricket goodness he's had! interesting thing to note is he has lost his horns... i guess only the girls keep the cute tufts of hair. i tried to get a picture but he ran and hid in his bed. tsk tsk. the boys are always so much more timid than the girls. i'll get some pics eventually!

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.

;)

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 awhile ago, i mentioned that bobbette joined the family and then bobby3 was introduced as a housemate (or a meal... but he is still alive, so i guess he's a housemate after all) to her. countless bobblets have since been hatched and released (maybe about 30-40). some bobbeggs have also been (greedily) munched up by sonic and munster. i know, i know. how far have i come since that fateful day in june? how appalled would i be in the past about feeding spider eggs to spiders? how i justified this action to myself (and my horrified best friend) was that munster and sonic would readily eat bobbies, so bobbies are like chickens. hence, nothing wrong with eating chicken eggs.

there are two reasons for doing this.

1. i don't want to multiply bobbies too much for now, at least not until the professor tells me what species bobby is. and whether he belongs in singapore.

2. it's getting hard finding flying ants for munster and sonic, and a diet of only fruit flies isn't nutritious enough.

so, it all works out. i have a mini chicken farm. :) i can definitely deal with feeding bobbeggs to the adansoni instead of letting them hunt down cute little bobblets.



will post bobbette pics soon!

:)

finally! pictures! :)

here's min after her second moult. at this point, she was about 2.5mm-3mm. :)



as you can see, it's getting easier to focus on her, even though she has grown by such a minuscule bit.

:)

so much to say and do. i feel a little lost. :)

i've finally finished my 50-part project, as of tonight. the satisfaction is beyond description. i've been told that i'll be given a break - this holds two very pleasing bits of information because 1. i really do need a break 2. a break means i will have more work lined up.

regarding medical stuff and us humans, there has been a change of plans and mother went ahead with her surgery first. she is now recovering in hospital, after having gone through a 3-hour operation on monday. she was meant to be discharged after 3 days, but she's not been able to eat anything solid, or even keep much liquid down. she can't come home till she's able to eat solid meals and digest them normally. i was by her side when she was tormented by trapped wind in her stomach and indigestion from drinking soup and liquids. it was painful to see. i wished i could share her suffering. i felt horribly helpless. but i was very glad to be there when she finally managed to throw everything up after more than 4 hours, so i could hold the plastic bag and clean up afterwards. i doubt the nurses would have rushed over in time.

yesterday i sprained my neck by sneezing too hard (wtf) and so was trapped at home. am slightly more mobile now and should be right as rain tomorrow. father reports that mother is feeling better today, although still unable to eat.

my own operation will take place only after mother recovers. which could be a few weeks or a month. maybe i'll do it on my birthday as a joke on myself. har har.

now, on to the more fun stuff! :)

bobby3 has been planted in bobbette's jar. teehee. i didn't know what would happen to him. when they mated for the first time, they took such a long time that i went to bed before they were done. i woke up the next morning half expecting to find him dead on the floor of the jar. but, no! there he was, hanging quietly sleeping in a corner away from mrs bobbette. and somehow, he has survived till today. occasionally, they have a domestic - bobbette would chase him round and round the jar but he manages to get away. either that or she gives up. i don't know. but they seem to be living quite happily ever after. in fact, i'm so amazed at this happy coexistence that i'm tempted to swop bobby in. cos i'd much rather bobby be the happy little guy, right? but i'm still afraid that bobby won't be as quick on his feetsies as bobby3. so... better not.

munster has laid her third batch of eggses. this time is a little worrying because i can see eight eggses sitting inside her cocoon. they're not meant to be visible and usually are wrapped in a fluff ball inside the cocoon. i'm not sure if she was careless, or they dropped out, or... she's getting senile? jeremy says web spiders do that when they're about to die - their last eggs may not be wrapped properly, maybe they're losing coordination or energy or something. i'm hoping this isn't the case with munster since she isn't a web spider...

i've started to train the bubs to hunt more menacing meals like flying (queen) ants. strangely, on two occasions when i'd managed to catch flyingants of the right size for the bubs (about 4mm-5mm or less), they'd appeared in fantastic numbers on the floor of my living room. it was amazing. the first time, a total of 5 turned up. just nice, one for each bub. the second time, a total of 9 turned up! one for each bub and one for each adult, including the bobbies! (bobby3 hadn't joined us then)

feeding bobby3 was quite difficult because bobbette kept snatching his meals. until i worked out a method. i now feed bobbette first with a big fat meal. after she spins it into a ball, drags it into her corner to eat and is totally engrossed in it, i throw in a smaller meal for bobby3 - as close to him as possible so he gets to it first without alarming bobbette. this works well so far. :)

not sure if i mentioned it before, but poe has gone to her foster mom, salsarina. i will be visiting her tomorrow after i visit mother. :)

all my 5 bubs have done their third moult so far. they're getting quite big! i think because their eyesight is getting better, they're freaking out more as well. they startle at more movements now, and even min is getting more jittery. i hope my mission to photograph her life stages can be completed without mishaps.

there are lots more little stories to tell about them but i will save those to post together with corresponding pictures. i know i keep saying this but i truly have mountains of pictures to post. yes, kyle, i did promise to post some by friday. i know. i will!

:)

min has just done her second moult!

flynn and poof will be next, followed by max and missy. max and missy had just eaten their last meal before moult, re-lined their hammocks, and popped in today. seems like max has somehow lost the competitive edge.

flynn is turning out to be a big girl. i think she's the biggest in size, followed by min. we shall see how they turn out after second moult is over.

am expecting flynn and poof to moult tomorrow. min should emerge late tomorrow or the day after. max and missy should moult the day after.

min's exoskeleton looks quite a lot thicker this time. can't wait to grab it for a pic! will be exciting to have min on my hand too. i hope i don't lose her.

in other (less fun) news, my mother will also be undergoing surgery soon. she is not ill, but has a problem with her intestines to be rectified - a problem that she has lived with for about 15 years. it's about darn time. we went to mount elizabeth for her consultation today. she will be doing ultrasound scans, gastroscopy and colonoscopy next week. very uncomfortable things that cost a bomb.

her surgery will be a much more major one than mine. it's strange how she has picked this period to deal with this issue. i suspect she's trying to show me that surgeries are no big deal. if it weren't for the fact that her life would improve so much after going through with it, i'd wish she wasn't going through with it. i wish i'm not going through with it either. but what must be done, must be done.

well, with mother to worry about, my mind is taken off my condition now. am now rushing my work so that i'll get this current project finished, do my surgery, get well and take care of mother when she goes for hers.

by the way, people - make sure you are properly covered by medical insurance! not just for accidents, but for illnesses as well. especially women! all sorts of crap can happen to our intricate plumbing as we age. i was careless. my impending surgery should have been under coverage but i've failed to get complete coverage of this sort. oh well.

so strange how it seems to be a season for surgeries! that makes four of us now.

so i was worried about letting the bubs out for walkies after they've moulted, since they're bigger, stronger and faster now. but after trying to shoot min through the walls of her jar, i decided that it wasn't doing her royal cuteness any justice.

i decided to take the risk after observing her in her jar for awhile. i noticed that she was still very quiet, like she was when she first emerged from her mommy's cocoon. no rushing about like a ganchiong spider. she sits and stares at nothing... a lot. i think missy and min do it the most. they would actually sit on the bottom of the jar (missy goes further to sit on her water tube) and stare at nothing, when none of the rest of the spideys (adults or babies alike) like to go near the bottom of the jar at all. i think it's really cute when they do it. they look like little deviant children.

out she came onto my hand and she did some scampering at first. nothing too exuberant. after about two minutes, she stopped on the back of my wrist. and there she sat. and sat. and carried on sitting. only after i'd downloaded my pictures did i realise that she was actually looking around as i was snapping away. i'd thought she was in the same pose throughout like 20 pictures or something. she's really too tiny for me to see her expression clearly with naked eyes.



i hope i can document her progress in close-range as she moults and grows bigger each time. if her temperament keeps up, i really hope i can have her walking on my hand even as an adult. if she was looking around calmly and not just plain stoning, i like to think i have a good chance that she's blessed with a cool and collected nature. :) also need to keep myself primed with the steady hands at all times so there is less risk of her jumping off in panic...

it seems this is as wordy as it's pictorial. well, what the hell.

:)

with little min! she's such a good girl!

pictures coming up.

:)

everyone's caught up all of a sudden...

poof came in fourth, then max decided she wouldn't be beaten by missy, and missy gladly brings up the rear.

in other (stinky) news, i've just lost a container full of fruit flies. :( i'd been slowly breeding little containers of fruit flies to try to get a constant supply of meals for my spideykids and spideybubs. one container seems to be doing well. the other... i'd dumped in freshly mashed banana and it seemed to have produced too much toxic fumes during decomposition. all the flies died suddenly. and this container had many many more flies than the other too! what a waste. :(

boy was it a pain to wash it out. kor! i held my breath and i reckon i could still smell it through my pores.

flynn has moulted!

max is really taking her own sweet time...

meanwhile, min is first one out of her hammock after moulting. she has rested in it for about a day, i assume for her new skin to harden. i fed her a very fat and jumpy fruit fly which wasn't an easy prey. it took her a few tries to grab it, but she did in the end. :)



i'm guessing poe will rest for today and pop out tomorrow for her breakfast. flynn will probably pop out on sunday.

who's gonna be next?

coming in second, unexpectedly, is salsarina's little poe!

max has some catching up to do!

poor little poof had a small invasion of ants. while i was busy with work, about three or four ants wriggled their way into poof's jar through the air vents. i'd only noticed when little poof scrambled out of her hammock and was running around in her jar. the movement caught my eye because none of them are supposed to be out walking about during moulting. a closer look revealed the presence of three nasty ants, one of whom was checking out poof's hammock.

ants were quickly banished and poof has since returned to her hammock. i hope this doesn't affect her moulting mission.

in other (less interesting) news, i'm getting 5 days of work done in 2 days thanks to some irrational decisions made by someone i don't know. i hope i never get to meet this person who is several links away from me, or i will do nasty things.

min has moulted! :) she's the first one! she's beaten max to it.

the rest are still hiding in their hammocks. missy was the last one in.

i'm not exactly sure when min got out of her old shell, it might have been earlier today but i was rushing work like a lunatic (thanks to crazy scheduling/editing peeps who have decided to compress the series suddenly, so the footages get so chopped up that the series doesn't make any sense. oh well, whatever pleases them). min is still in her hammock, resting. she looks a little bigger now. her old exoskeleton is in a semi-transparent heap next to her.

i hope she's hungry tomorrow.

:)

so much has happened with the spideybubs that i don't quite know where to begin!

i'll just wing it and hope it's not too confusing. since hatching within the cocoon, the bubbies have taken their time to emerge. two little ones came out first - maximun and minimun. i took max out to play walkwalk on my hand first, but max was too zippy to photograph. i suspect max is the firstborn (which was proven further later). so i tried to photograph min instead, and she stayed still like a good little girl. :)



min was so still and quiet i thought she might be blind. it turns out the bubbies are a little err retarded when they first emerge from the cocoon. so min sat quietly in my hand while i snapped pictures to my heart's content, and i even had time to scroll through to check for clarity.

min was isolated in a temporary container, while max continued to roam munster's jar.

the next day, munster was out walking. i'd fed her heaps and she wasn't hungry, but max was driving her nuts. hee. little max zoomed like crazy around the jar and the movements would catch munster's eye. she would stop and glare for a little while, before turning away. jeremy said she might eat max soon, so i rescued the little bub.

i prowled the neighbourhood and caught some miniscule insects to put max and min on their first training hunt. neighbours thought i was a loon, going around peering at seemingly blank walls at nose length. :)

max and min passed their hunting tests with flying colours - from junior level (very tiny insects like aphids) to intermediate (fruit flies) to advanced (male mozzies, which are like three times their body length). they progressed at about the same time, with max displaying sharper hunting techniques (firstborn indeed!) while min takes a little longer to snag her prey. both have done well and i is a proud granny. :)

because max is way too fast, isn't shy, and tries to jump on the camera all the time, the best i could do was two not-as-clear-as-i-would-have-liked pictures of her.



she ran non-stop around my hand. when the camera lens was very close, she'd try to jump on it. she actually got on my lens twice. she jumped around so much that my hand was full of little web-strings (they are in the habit of pinning a string down before jumping... helps them to zoom back to where they were in case they regret jumping. kinda like a ctrl-z/undo action on the computer).

you can see she's a different colour from min because this was after a few days of hunting and eating already. their bodies are starting to change colour. as i type, max and min are actually almost ready to moult for the first time outside of the cocoon. they've both turned a shiny jet-black colour and have been sitting quietly in their mini-hammocks. i'm hoping to catch them in the act. :)

min was named minimun because i commented on how she looked like a mini-munster one night after she'd just eaten a rather large fruit fly. credit to uncle jeremy for the suggestions of minimun and maximun. the name maximun was meant to be tagged on a later baby which turns out to be the fattest and biggest, but i couldn't wait because the little firstborn girl was turning out like max in dark angel - very kickass! besides, it seemed only right for the two first bubs to be max and min.

i'm keeping several babies because i want to be sure that i have a girl. apparently it's very difficult to tell a spider's gender when they are still bubs. so jeremy suggested for me to keep at least four bubbies so the chances of having at least one girl is pretty high.

two days after max and min emerged from the cocoon, the baby-explosion happened in munster's jar. all the bubs came out one by one and soon the jar was a happening little place! i put in two fruit flies in case any of them were ready to hunt. the next morning, i found the flies dead and did a bit of detective work to see which bubs had dunnit. it wasn't hard to spot them - they had the tell-tale red tummies that jeremy taught me to look out for which means they've eaten. two bubs were sporting bright red tumtums, and i scooped bubba3 and bubba4 out immediately.

bubba3 had a special mission. i brought it out with me to meet a girlfriend who was having surgery the next day (a similar surgery to my impending one) and we played walkwalk with it on our hands to cheer her up. she christened it 'dances with leaves' and we released it into the bushes next to takashimaya.

bubba4 is poof. poof sat in her little jar for awhile, then suddenly disappeared. i looked around an empty jar, flabbergasted. until i spotted a hole in the cork which made a nice cosy cave for a baby spider. the next day, i put a fruit fly into poof's jar for her to hunt. a few seconds later, i saw the darn fly escape through a flapping air vent which hasn't been glued down properly! so i thought, maybe poof has poofed a long time ago! i prodded the cork-cave with a brush and poof popped out. :) air vent has been taped down and cork has since been changed, so poof was forced to spin a hammock like everyone else. speaking of which, she has still managed to do things differently by spinning her hammock in a location different from her siblings.

this is a weird thing that i'm still observing with no conclusion. of the six bubs that have been isolated in their own spideyhomes, four of the bubs have spun their hammock in EXACTLY THE SAME LOCATION! isn't that weird? they've picked a spot that is approx 40 degrees angle to the right of the cork, if the cork is taken as the centre. max did it first, then the rest followed. i wonder if they've been passing notes to each other behind my back.

well, so little poof spun hers 40 degrees to the left of the cork instead. :)

on to bubba5. one night, i'd accidentally flooded munster's jar with fruit flies. oops. so i tried to take some out. one little bub pretended to be a fly and ran into my container. so, that was how flynn was taken out. this little girl is very alert and quick on her feet, but gets distracted rather easily. she'd hunt and hunt and then forget she was hunting...

bubba6 is poe, to be adopted by one of my girlfriends, miss salsarina. i'm gonna be nanny for awhile to fatten poe up so that sal doesn't have to go around trying to catch insects of less than 2mm. poe is named after the book that sal has just bought - edgar allan poe's complete works. :)

i picked poe out for sal by opening the cap of the jar and catching the bub that made it to the top first. poe is turning out to have quite a character of her own as well. she is a gan-chiong spider! ('gan-chiong spider' is a local slang in singapore which literally means 'flustered spider', usually used on people who are rushing about like spiders) hehehe. very cute when she's trying to hunt. she jumps around like mad, trying to grab the meal. i'm not sure if she will learn the art of prowling later on. :)

last but not the least, we have a special child named missy. missy was one of the last to emerge from the cocoon. strangely, she came out looking rather fat and round. i was convinced that this one is a girl! i scooped out her with some difficulty because she was a little spastic. :p she just wouldn't respond to anything. the thought of blindness crossed my mind again, but i remembered that min was also like that. so, i gave her more time.

missy is taking longer than all her siblings to wise up to the world. i think we do have a problem child in this one. she's the only one who hasn't built her hammock in her new home, and has only hunted one fruit fly to date (the rest have hunted at least two each). however, i believe she is actually quite a clever girl when she chooses to be - she actually caught the fruit fly within 5 seconds of it entering the jar, and was spot-on with her first pounce.



she is also the only waterbaby amongst the spideybubs. she loves water! after her photoshoot on my hand, she actually went and sat on the water cotton piece. she washed her face and wiped herself down. then just sat there stoning away for a long time. she only started to clamber off when i moved her jar to take a better picture.

i think this entry is very disjointed because there is so much i'm trying to say but they're coming out in bits and chunks. i hope it doesn't make for terrible reading. one last thing is, if you noticed, i've been calling my bubs girls even though i'd mentioned that it's not possible to tell their gender when they're so young. well, after staring at the bubs milling around in munster's jar for long hours everyday, i think i can tell them apart. i'm not sure if my theory holds true, only time will tell when these six bubbies mature. but for now, i'm quite sure i'm right.

oh, more last things to say. the rest of the bubs have since been released. i've trained them to hunt in munster's jar with lots of fruit flies, and monitored their progress as best as i could (for like 20 bubbas, quite mind-boggling). only a handful hadn't managed to hunt, and those are the ones nature will weed out, i believe. they're on their own now.

in other news, munster has laid another batch of eggses. i think these will go straight to mother nature when they emerge, along with all subsequent batches. i wonder how many kids munster will have...

:)