Yesterday, I started moving the larger juvenile Latrodectus to their very own special homes, and I give them a day to build a cobweb before giving them a homecoming meal. This young lady got handed a whole mealworm — imagine giving a teenager a whole cow and permission to kill and eat it. That’s what this was like.

She kept tapping it like she could hardly believe it was all hers. She’s been living on fruit flies for the past month or so, so this was like a miracle meal plopped into her lap. If spiders had laps.

Notice how she has the white juvenile markings on her dorsal abdomen. Those will fade. She also has a red hourglass on her ventral abdomen, which will not.