here's a random pic of lucia, before she laid four clutches of eggses. so angry at the black spaceship, yet still so cute. :D



lucia passed on in may this year. she spent her final moments curling up in the warmth of my palm as we said goodbye.

:)

i had a most satisfying and productive day! :D

it's been ages since i've had a day off - i even had to work while visiting a friend in melbourne. wasn't much of a vacay, no! my projects have been lined up and i was ready to dig into my next one after i wrapped up the previous one yesterday. imagine my joy when i received an sms from my boss to say, changes in schedule - halt and stand by for more instructions! woohoo!

i did intend to take the day off today to run some errands and pick up the babies from the lab where they were being babysat. but it sure feels good not to have the new project hanging (looming) in the near distance! :D

so, i caught up with sarge today and we went to the cricket farm, bought my bubs some fresh food, picked up the bubs from the lab, and had a cuppa tea + poached eggs on toast @ colbar. after i got home, i re-housed the bubs in suitable homes and did some major tidying/cleaning of spaces in my room. i've not had a chance to unpack properly since landing back in singapore last monday, so it felt really good to be tidying! i also want to re-organise some spaces so i'm going to get that done tomorrow!

and since i'm feeling really productive, i did up a coupla spideybub peektures from some time ago, when my current babies were still babies! :)



i currently have three babies, all girls - lucelle, lucine, lucilla. i had six but three babies died while i was away. one thing i've observed about my current batch of spideybubs, from momma lucia, is that they seem to be weaker and more delicate than lucy's bubs were. weaker genes, perhaps?

i did get a nice video of their big sister, lucius, before i went to melbourne in august. i took it knowing that she may not be alive when i got back. lucius had the most darling temperament. i could actually handle her in broad daylight and she sat happily on my arm, washing her face. :) babysitter, uncle stan, messaged me when i was in melbourne, informing me of her passing, on the 24th september:

Hi Jes,
Sorry to inform u that yr baby Lucius had passed away, prob last nite.
She slipped away to spidey heaven peacefully, leaving behind a furry body on her cage floor, still looking as adorable as ever.
My heartfelt condolences.

as a spideymommy, i have come to terms with the fact that my babies will leave me quite often, especially this species that i so love - they seem to have a pretty short lifespan despite their magnificent size (for salticidae). i still love each and every one of them, but i now can let them leave in peace and well wishes instead of grief.

rest in peace, lucius! i'm glad we bonded before you went on your way!

i will try to get her video edited and uploaded very soon, so all of youse can share our bond. i just have to think of what music to use! (argh!)

and that's all for now, folks! i shall have an early night tonight for a change!

tata for now!

:)

the spideykids had a fruitfly buffet today. =)

sorry for the sporadic-ness of this entry but i don't know how to bring everyone up to speed properly so i'm just gonna jump in and post whatever comes to mind. hehe!

i currently have eight babies, from mommy lucia who has already passed on. she had four clutches in total, and i have at least one baby from each. i kept more of the first, a few of the second, and one each of the third and fourth.

on the humans front, i have finally done the surgery that i mentioned some time ago. was it two years ago or something? it turned out that keyhole surgery wasn't an option, so i had open surgery. i always thought it was minor, until i was admitted and overheard the nurses talking about the "major operation tomorrow". *blink*

the ten minutes i spent waiting outside the operation theatre for my turn was the longest ten minutes of my life.

i had morphine on tap after the operation. it wasn't as fun as people think it is, but it did make sleeping rather pleasant. i slept for like an entire day or two. then after that, i caught on that they would not take the drip off me as long as i was still needing the morphine, so i stopped pressing the button. i hated having the drip in my arm. wanted to get rid of it pronto. =(

strangely, there wasn't much pain. it was mostly just inconvenience and fear of ripping the wound open.

the four days in hospital were the longest four days of my life. never been so happy to get home when i eventually did. =)

much thanks to salsarina and lennon for being the first two friendly faces i saw afterward - even though i could only keep one eye open; my chocolatechip muffin marianne for the long distance phone call; ness for making me dinner and deb for bringing her laptop; kate, kenneth, amanda and hosea for visiting with flowers, fruit and food; my big sister linda for the love from new york; my boss for being understanding; vince for the frequent chats during my recovery month; and mother for everything she has done for me. =)

so that was more than a month ago. i'm pretty much ok now. not 100% yet but that's gonna take time. the entire experience is something i hope i never have to go through again, especially the part where they made me climb back onto my bed from the trolley after the surgery. i had no idea why they couldn't just lift me back. that was my least favourite incident out of the entire hospital stay. the runner-up would be the time the nurse on duty decided to forcibly empty the drip bottle into me so that she could change to a new bottle right away, causing my arm to swell like a pig's trotter. the swelling went down after they finally took the drip off me, but the pain in my arm lasted for more than a month.

yes, never again, would be good.

=)

just a quick one to say, lucia has laid her second clutch! =)

yes, i owe everyone pics and please be assured that i have taken some! but i'm drowning in work so it'll have to wait!

in the meantime, let me leave you with a snippet of the stuff i have been cracking my brains over. i'm so glad i'm done with this bit. i only hope they don't recite other parts of the scripture in later episodes!

天之道
損有餘而補不足
是故虛勝實
不足勝有餘
其意博 其理奧 其趣深
天地之象分
陰陽之候列
變化之由表
死生之兆彰
不謀而遺跡自同
勿約而幽明斯契
稽其言有微 驗之事不忒
誠可謂至道之宗
奉生之始矣
假若天機迅發
妙識玄通
成謀雖屬乎生知
標格亦資於治訓
未嘗有行不由送
出不由產者亦
然刻意研精 探微索隱
或識契真要 則目牛無全
故動則有成 猶鬼神幽贊
而命世奇傑 時時間出焉
五藏六府之精氣
皆上注於目而為之精
精之案為眼 骨之精為瞳子
筋之精為黑眼 血之精為力絡
其案氣之精為白眼
肌肉之精為約束
裹擷筋骨血氣之精
而與脈並為系

i barely had time to breathe all day!

so, i didn't want to post this any earlier in case i jinxed it or in case i guessed wrong. lucia has been hiding away in a very thick nest for the past few weeks, emerging for a meal every once a week or so. i have been praying that she has laid eggses. and from her voracious appetite, uncle john and i both thought it was entirely possible.

so! weeks have been flying by. still no sign of bubs. i do remember that hyllus diardi bubs take a super long time to emerge, but there was also the possibility that lucia hasn't mated at all. i did notice that the first time she came out for a meal, she was visibly thinner.

yesterday, she stood outside her nest and just stared at me all day, following my movements. i thought she had something to tell me. i feared that she was trying to tell me she needed a mate.

guess what i saw this morning?

two little ones! =) venturing out for the very first time. my new kids on the block. if i was in the habit of squealing, i would have squealed. but i wasn't, so i merely stared at them with saucer eyes and beamed like a crazy person.

momma lucia has been transferred to a new home so i can deal with the bubbas without freaking her out. she is extremely fat from a recent cricket meal and still seems to be hunting for more food, so i think she will have at least one more clutch. poor little dear is trying to find her way back to her old nest, unaware that she is in a different little world now. i'm so sorry sweetie!

i can't believe how blessed i have been with this very lovely species. first it was lucy, found by uncle john, and came to us already gravid. she gave me the most wonderful spideykids, and they grew up beautifully. tiga and lucien were the largest adults of their kind ever spotted. they all had such fantastic, individual personalities. unfortunately, being a more delicate species, mating attempts were not successful and lucy's genes could not be continued. lucia came to me when i was missing my wonderful furry darlings, once again found by uncle john, and amazingly, once again gravid!

i'm loving 2009 so far. and it's only going to get better.

=)

it started to pour and from the corner of my eye, i saw a familiar scurrying figure outside my window. rain was running down all around her and she was trapped. she was actually on the wall outside my window and it wasn't easy to reach her, much less coax her into a container to shelter, but i did (with some extreme contortionist actions, two long-handled brushes, some wire, a container and a piece of paper).



she is a fat little girl who looks like she's carrying eggses. i might give her a temp room to have her bubbas in safety and lots of food. not sure what she is yet... will have to consult uncle moo!

as promised, here is a little movie of lucia eating a moth, made to 'surf' by moby, approved license from mobygratis.com.



=)

i have the cutest footage of lucia eating a moth meal and i'm currently waiting for a reply from moby to use one of his tracks available for non-commercial use. thanks for the site, matt! =)

john came by and brought my new furry girl! =)



this is something i observed of salticids. when their vision is less than crystal clear, they tend to be less jittery and frightened. it's like looking at the world through rose coloured (murky?) lenses. no clear vision = no sight of enemies. like an ostrich with its head in the ground. teehee!

so, lucia was very calm in her little takeaway tub, happy and oblivious.

when i opened the lid, she had a sudden whiff of the world around her and everything suddenly became crystal clear! she panicked, scuttled out of the tub, jumped onto my hand, bounced off and landed on my desk, then jumped onto my hand again, and bounced off again, and made for my imac screen.

so i decided not to try to get an open pic of her for today and just put her in her new home instead. i'll try handling her again when i get some cricket meals for her, make her fat and play with her after that.

she is slightly smaller than lucy and lucien were, but is very sprightly and healthy. she is more happy exploring than lucy was, even though both were adults brought in from the wild. lucy used to spend a lot of her time hiding and staying very still, doing the 'you-can't-see-me-if-i-don't-move' thing.

lucia has chosen a nice little spot for her hammock between the fabric leaf and the ceiling, spun her bed, and turned in for the night.

i feel normal again. i must admit that i have been feeling a little out of sorts when the last of my hyllus diardi passed on. that would be bib, by the way. she left about a week after her big sister, lucien.

thank you, john! she is so impossibly cute.

=)

i made a little moofie with the little clip from john! =)

it was my first time using the imovie on this imac. yup, this is why i have not done any more vids of lucien even though i have so much footage of her - i have not had the time to familiarise myself with the new imovie and it's very different from the old one! i think i have the basics down now. look out for more vids of lucien soon!

isn't lucia a cutie?



i will be catching up with john this week. can't wait to see my new girlie!

=)

OMG OMG OMG!

new spider! john! two days ago! yay! OMG!

i'll leave you with that. i'm going to try to sleep now. teehee!

okok... john is back from HK and has a new spideykid for me, that he caught two days ago! before i even told him we need to go lucy-hunting! how uncanny! i was just waiting patiently for his return, which i didn't think would be so soon. and then suddenly he's back! and then i tell him we have to find me another lucy, because all my hyllus diardi have passed on and i'm having h. diardi withdrawal symptoms... and then he tells me, oh i have one and you have can her! OMG!

i almost cried when i watched the little vid he took of the new girl. =)

what do youse think of the name lucia?

*dances around the room*

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.

these were taken 24th nov 2007, almost a year ago.



she was such a wee little thing. :) she hunted very well, so i never expected her to grow up a problem child. as she got older, she became really, really shy. she refused to hunt her meals when her sibs would, and sometimes at night when everyone was sleeping, i would spot her standing outside her hammock with the meal firmly in her fangs.

nonetheless, she grew up into a beautiful adult spideykid, my little delinquent.

at some point a coupla months ago, i noticed that she had balded quite severely. i took it as a sign of aging, as her mom lucy was balding in the last few months of her life. however, by some miracle, bib has shown no signs of deterioration. so, other than looking a little less pretty, she seems to be still healthy today.

that said, some of my kids did leave me very suddenly (while some did slow down a little), so it's hard to tell if the end is near, really. hopefully, she won't leave without saying goodbye.

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.

little dot (who wasn't so little actually, she was about an inch) has since passed away, but here are two pics i caught of her back in july, peeping at her sister lucien who was exploring a nice big jar i'd put her in for fun. this was before lucien lost her ability to hang on to plastic walls.



i was caught off-guard when dot passed away. i was half-expecting dot to outlive lucien, because she ate less and developed slower. i wonder if we would ever get advanced enough in bio-science technology to be able to diagnose and determine arachnid illnesses and causes of death.

rest in peace, little dot. you have been a sweet little kid. i wish i got to say goodbye.

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.