Thursday, April 10, 2008

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: With Less Autism

Helob, the Tarantula of Undefined Species, molted lasted night. I noticed that she/he/it/spider had flipped over onto his/her/its/spider's back and immediately sniffed the top of the cage. I have heard that tarantulas reek horribly when they die and thought that maybe she/he/it/spider had decided to leave this existence in a cartoonishly melodramatic fashion. The cage did not smell of dead tarantula, incidentally I have no idea what that smells like, and Helob did wiggle her/his/its/spider's legs when I brought the enclosure down to the floor.

Having once read that tarantulas needs a lot of humidity and no crickets in their cages when they molt, I immediately put fresh water in the dish, added a second dish of water, and dribbled water on the glass sides of the ten-gallon aquarium in which Helob lives. Over the next couple hours, Helob wiggled free of his/her/its/spider's old exoskeleton and is now happily hiding in the corner of the aquarium. I think she/he/it/spider may be feeding on the remaining juice in the husk, as I have heard tarantulas do that.

It will take several days for Helob's new exoskeleton to reach full strength and I plan on purchasing a smaller enclosure and filling it with clean sand and a small burrow. Or maybe I will just get clean sand and remove the old dirt from the current cage. Both of these ideas require me to remove Helob from her/his/its/spider's home temporarily and to do that, I must either pick up a spider with INCH-LONG FANGS or shovel Helob out with a bowl or something and hope he/she/it/spider doesn't crawl out and escape under my stove or something. The last thing this country needs is another Cirith Ungol. Especially in my apartment.

Here are a couple videos:
Helob is brown but you get the idea:


That same species has a dinner date:


Did you notice how it had one foot on the web? Terrestrial tarantulas apparently have abysmal eyesight and use the vibrations caused by moving food on the webs to locate and catch prey.

Here is a dumbass kid:

19 comments:

Adorable Girlfriend said...

The videos would be a lot hotter if there were naked people in them.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Rule 34, AG:

Anonymous said...

Run. Away.

Jennifer said...

and hope he/she/it/spider doesn't crawl out and escape under my stove or something.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's been a long day and I was planning on going to sleep early, but ... NOT NOW! No, now I'll be up wondering if any hairy, jointed creature is leaving a juicy husk of exoskeleton somewhere in my house... that is when I'm not worrying about the inch-long fangs.

(I nearly typed, inch-long wang...)

Snag said...

Even I'm having trouble coming up with a food joke about this one.

Kathleen said...

I looked away and you can't make me look.

Jenny said...

OMG! You are SUCH a bastard! Here I logged on thinking I could get a few laughs and instead you have subjected me to the sights found only in my worst nightmares! I can't even look at little pindrop-sized spiders, let alone huge hairy monsters like that! At the risk of going all girly on you, oh my fucking lord!!!!

Jenny said...

P.S., I don't remember his name, but what ever happened to a good old-fashioned iguana?

Chuckles said...

The iguana was donated to 5th grade science class the last I heard. In my dreams, he speaks to me in riddles.

Chuckles said...

Billy Pilgrim, that is hilarious. I also laugh at the fact that she had two folders and one of them was titled "Non-Furry."

Adorable Girlfriend said...

You totally know that picture was in Billy P.'s all time favorite porno collection.

That he keeps on his computer. At work.

missyandchrissy said...

i don't know how you did it, but this post almost makes me want a tarantula....

how old is Helob?

Chuckles said...

I don't know how old Helob is, as I was bequethed her/him/it/spider from a primary school science teacher in my neighborhood.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

If you have an iquana, there is no other choice than to name him Pop.

Chuckles said...

No Chub Chub love? Or Jub Jub or whatever Marge's sisters call their iguana?

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Is it just coincidence I watched the latter two Lord Of The Rings movies this weekend?

It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

Jennifer said...

If you have an iquana, there is no other choice than to name him Pop.

:)

Or Rev. Shannon

Anonymous said...

The videos would be a lot hotter if there were naked people in them.

Yeah, more naked people and fewer spiders!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I forgot to mention that I found the video of little blue spider-dude struggling to get his pants off irresistably cute.

and disturbingly familiar....