Well, long time no see! Three new finds and a couple losses.

Wow! It has been over a month since my last post! Life got pretty hectic as the quarter was coming to an end and I was trying to keep my grades up the best I could. I am also involved in some other activities after school these days and so more of my time is being taken up. I would have loved to blog on some pretty cool moments, but time just ran away and I never really could catch up. And I just came back from spring break and even though I could have caught up on my blogs, I forgot about it all and just laid low the whole break to rest. It was nice to get extra sleep.

So now on to the spiders. A lot and I'm not kidding when I say A Lot, has happened to the spiders. As you might recall, the new addition a couple months ago killed Waffles. That was a sad day and eventually, Marbles was killed as well. This new spider (which I still never got around to naming) has died today in a rather tragic accident. A friend of mine came to the lab this afternoon after school to see the spiders. And I was showing them to him when I decided to open the lid on the big enclosure so we could get a better look at the spider. It ran around the cage for a couple minutes until it darted up and over the side and ran under the counter edge. I got a pencil and coaxed it out and it ran back onto the counter and made its way to the other side of the counter and onto the wall. I stopped it with a catch cup and then got a piece of paper to help keep the spider inside the cup. Of course, it got out and ran towards the stapler on the counter on the other side of a few rolls of paper towel. Then it went to the side that I could not see and when I picked up the stapler to figure out where the spider went, it ran under the stapler to where I could not see and I set the stapler on top of it. And squashed it. The poor thing started to run away as fast as it could, but with it's entrails hanging out of it's rear end, it stopped just after a few seconds and started to curl up into a ball. It was a pretty sad moment as I put it on a piece of paper and carried it to the other end of the counter. (Sigh).

But there is some happy news as well. This morning, just as class was finishing up and our teacher had finished,we were free to have the last couple minutes to do what ever we wanted. So I walked into the lab and as I came up to the counter, a little fuzzy ball scurried across the window sill and under the ledge. I got my teacher's attention and he came to help me get the little guy. And now he has taken the space of the other spider which is now dead. Just a couple minutes ago, I witnessed him sneak up on and take out a dead cricket. (Yeah, I need to clean their containers out). It was pretty comical to see a live one hanging on one of the Styrofoam cup rings. A minute later, he grabbed the live one. 

And I must say that I feel pretty foolish for thinking that all these spiders were females when in reality, they were all juvenile males, although if Marbles and Waffles really were juveniles males, I am not completely sure, but it is very likely. Each one has molted except for the newest catch today which does have his manly palps. And the other two have gotten to be little monsters. They are all about 7 cm in leg span. They look awesome. I think I will be naming them soon, so stay tuned as I now have some more free time for blogging and hope to get around to posting some pictures and names of the new guys. ( I did manage to get some pictures of the one who was killed today, so those and the others will be posted hopefully this weekend.)

Thanks for checking out this blog and sorry it has been so long. I will try to do better next time and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as I possibly can. 

^oOO^{o   ~JUMPING SPiDER~}