In the early morning, we go on long spiderwalks looking for wild spiders. In the late morning I go in the lab to look for new spider egg sacs. In the afternoon I sort and tend to spiders. I’m going to have to think of a good spider-themed activity for my evenings.
Oh, yeah, I read papers about spiders.
Anyway, today I can report that a third egg sac is now leaking baby spiders. They are totally cute.
However, in less happy news, the Ministry of Reproduction finds it necessary to report Brienne for willful slacking of her responsibilities. We have been giving Brienne special privileges — the warmest part of the stack of spider cages, lots of food, and we’ve just been expectantly watching her for the last week. Brienne has gotten huge — just look at that swollen abdomen.
Yet she refuses to produce an egg sac, simply sitting in the same spot all the time, growing larger. Well, the Forced Birth Committee of the Ministry is having none of that. We expect her to do her duty and produce a massive quantity of eggs in short order, or we’ll have to move her into a small vial and give her voluminous cage to a more fertile female.
Or maybe we’ll have to give her a new consort. Is she just holding out for a hunkier male?
The mildly deranged penguin speculates this is a classic symptom of insufficient male meals. Just toss her a few of the students, male. They don’t have to be premashed, she says, but étudiant masculin haché would not go amiss…
How does her abdomen swell? I thought that chitin was rigid, which was the reason arthropods molt?
Chitin isn’t always hardened with tanning chemicals. How else would they be able to bend their joints?