Another Addition to the Group

Today, I caught another jumping spider. And it is not an other Phiddipus Audax, but a Platycryptus Undatus. It is about the size of Waffles, and is similar in color, but lighter. I found her today when I was helping prepare my school's gym for a festival this weekend. She was at the back doors of the gym, clinging to the wall between the two double doors. She was pretty much frozen, and could hardly move. I brought her back to the lab and put her on the counter, and blew some warm air over her. Then I found a beaker and set it over the top of her to keep her from escaping. She stayed there until after school was out, about a half hour later, and was then put into a pickle jar that my teacher had in the lab. I went outside and got some rocks and small peices of bark and then put her in it. She climbed under a rock. I went and got a cricket and put in there with her and then we watched her watch it and then she just stayed away from it. About ten minutes before I started this blog, I went in to check on her and so far, the cricket is still alive. I think the new spider has some thawing out to do still, but she can run backwards pretty quickly, something I have yet to see Marbles or Waffles do.

Something else of interest is that I found a body of a Phiddipus Audax a couple feet away at the edge of a sink. Yes, it is a whole body, not a molt. :( My teacher was wondering if it is Marbles 1.0. He still thinks that it is possible that Marbles (the current one) is Marbles 2.0 and that I just found the first one, the one that got away from me just right before Thanksgiving break. It is amazing that if it is the first one and that there were more than one (and probably still are more somewhere), that it survived that long. I know I didn't see that body the other day, and for the last couple weeks, I have been in and out of that lab about as much as my teacher has been. (He is probably in there a bit more than me, but it is close.) (We don't have classes that require us to use it all the time, so it would seem that nobody else goes in there much. And we have spider haters, so they avoid it now that they know that the spiders are there.) So it is a very interesting find. I'm sad about it, but it is life and I can't save every single one that I find. And I'm fine with that. Infact, I don't want to save every single spider I find. It's just a hobby to me and having a few around is fun, but filling the whole room would drive my teacher mad and it would be just too much to handle. Plus, he would run out of crickets really, really fast. He has been kind enough to let me take a couple baby crickets from his cricket stash (for the rest of his own critters) and feed my spiders once a week. I don't think I will have any more spiders. Maybe one if I can find one, but that is pretty rare right now, although odd things happen, like the one today. 

I enjoy this hobby and would encourage you to go out and find a spider and learn about it. And if you find a jumping spider, that is great, but try to find something else. There are thousands of them out there, and you will mostly find the biggest, most common ones near you. But try to look for the spiders that nobody else has found. New spiders are being found constantly and who knows, you could become one of them. That would be pretty awesome. 

This has been Jumping SPiDER and I would like thank you for checking out this blog. I hope you enjoyed it and if you have any questions, comments, or almost anything that has to do with this blog, please leave it in the comment area below and I will do my best to get back to you. :) 

^oOO^o