moar soon

Auburn Forest Ecology Preserve

Found this (very big) spider on the Ecology Preserve and was quite impressed. I think its Dolomedes albineus.
Then I saw something wiggling on the other side of the tree.
It was the tail of this Vaejovis carolinianus. But what is he holding? One of the spiders legs!
There were also several harvestmen on the same tree.
Arachnotrees!

Vaejovis carolinianus

Got a text message the other night at 2am from a good friend that read something to the effect of "Hey my girlfriend got stung by a scorpion.. you want it?"

Since we're in Alabama there were only two real possibilities in species and really only one considering where it was. That guess held true when I looked into the cup and spotted a Vaejovis carolinianus, the only Vaejovis sp. east of the Mississippi River.

Hes been eating pre-killed roaches so far because most of my roaches are bigger than him(mostly guessing on the sex). I may end up trying to start a colony of these guys..

My newest obsession: Theraphosidae (Tarantulas)

Last Thursday these little guys came from in from James Tuttle @ www.blaberus.com I had ordered some Blatta lateralis roaches from him to start a feeder colony but after reading a posting of his on arachnoboards.com I contacted him and got him to include these two 'slings' (spiderlings).

They arrived last Thursday (9/17/2009) after a two day journey from California. Both them and the roaches were perfectly healthy and happy. After I got them set up in their new containers they both ate and began to web up/excavate their new hiding places.

The guy on top is a gorgeous little Avicularia versicolor (Antilles pinktoe). A. versicolor are a glorious metallic dark cyan when young but upon maturing have purple legs, a blue/green cephalothorax and a reddish abdomen. Very nice! They are a New World arboreal species.

The second little guy is a Brachypelma vagans (Mexican redrump). They don't show too much color until they are adults whereupon they get a black velvety cephalothorax and abdomen with larger red setae growing through the black on the abdomen. B. vagans is a New World terrestrial species.

Hopefully I can manage to give updates on them and my new hobby.

why

I hope to use this blog to chronicle my latest obsessions and adventures and also to monitor those ongoing.