Are all my pets psycho?

I’ve mentioned my crazy evil cat before, but here’s another of my little friends, my greenbottle blue tarantula, Blue.

They are just coming down off a massive threat posture, which is a change. For a long time, they’ve been skittish and timid. I turn on the lights in the lab, they run and hide. I rattle the door a little bit when I go to feed them, they run and hide. A shadow moves across their container, they run and hide. I figured I’d adopted a cowardly spider.

Lately, though, as they mature — I can tell by how their pigment is darkening to a deep blue from the prior orange — they’ve gotten aggressive. Now they boldly stand in the middle of their space and turn to face me when I walk up to them, but not in a friendly way. When I put a mealworm in their face, no more fleeing, but instead, they rear up on their 4 hindlegs and threaten with their forelimbs, and flash their fangs at me. I’m feeding them! Calm down!

It’s becoming a trend that any animal I take care of gets psycho hostile.

Whoa, wait…could it be me?

Springtime, and one’s thoughts turn to spider breeding

I was walking into work this morning, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the wolf spiders were underfoot, and I saw all these delicate lines of silk draped over everything (once your eye is attuned to spotting silk lines, you discover that they are everywhere, on every fence post and bush.) I stopped by the lab and saw that the temperature in the spider incubators was a comfortable 27°C, and the humidity is rising at last to about 35%, so I checked the colony. Nobody is laying eggs yet, but they are looking plump and healthy and ready for a season of fecundity.

Steatoda triangulosa

Once the semester is truly over, in about a week and a half, I’m going to be doing some matchmaking, and that lovely virgin is going to take a lover.

A plea for sympathy

When did a dog or cat do so much for you?

I am, of course, giving our cat some side-eye right now.

The cat was looking over my shoulder and reading this as I posted it. Now she’s jumped on my lap, keeping me from my work and forcing me to type one-handed.

I’ve got to be more careful about letting her read the internet.

Good morning spider!

Do you have a friendly little feral spider in your house who will sometimes scurry up to you in the morning and wave a leg? You’re missing out if not.

The only bad thing is that they’re too busy living their own lives to stop and pose for a while. I do what I can with an unwieldy macro camera.

An arachnologist fantasizing about summer in February

I have been daydreaming about doing some collecting trips this summer — I have been seduced by the exotic opportunities of tromping around the southern part of Minnesota, place like Pipestone and maybe even making forays into South Dakota and Iowa. Yeah! Get wild with it!

And then, the American Arachnological Society announces the location of their 2024 meeting. It’s going to be in Chetumal, Mexico.

Chetumal is located in the south of the state of Quintana Roo, on the border with Belize. It’s a small town surrounded by mangrove swamps and forest, lagoons such as Bacalar, home to numerous chelicerates in addition to Mayan remains. It faces a gigantic bay that is a reserve for manatees and is located at the gateway to the Caribbean.

“home to numerous chelicerates” isn’t normal advertising copy for a travel destination, but you’ve got to know your audience. Think of the spiders you could find! Suddenly, the south of Minnesota looks tepid and boring.

I have some trepidations. I have zero confidence in airlines anymore, after that catastrophic collapse of my last trip to AAS (the meeting was in upstate NY, couldn’t even get there because airlines kept canceling flights, ended up sitting in the Minneapolis airport for a couple of days). I don’t know if I can scrape any money out of my university travel budget after that expensive debacle.

On the plus side, I do have some Patreon savings I could use — and of course I’d have to fill my Patreon page with travel photos of beautiful Chetumal. You know, the usual touristy things of closeups of spiders in the mangrove swamps. I’ve never been on the glitzy side of scientific conferences, so this might be my last chance. And it’s Mexico! I love Mexico!

So now I begin a period of indecisive agonizing, to go or not to go. I may end up looking at my budget and deciding it’s not possible, but as long as I haven’t done any accounting, I can dream.