Friday, May 20, 2005

Can't help creamin' over tarantulas

Hopefully by tomorrow noon I'll have a new baby. She's a female pink toed tarantula named Harriet. Never thought I'd ever get a pet spider...but I came across a little article about them in in the pet store....and then I read about 4 books on them after that. Fucking facinating creatures. Just to give you the tip of the iceburg....Their anatomy is more bizarre than any of us could imagine....They have a total of 8 pairs of appendages....they have no jaws but possess highly specialized and efficient weapons in their place. They have no distinct heads, but carry their brains where we might ordinarily expect a heart....Their stomachs (both of them) are also there, instead of an abdomen....Althrough their heart and lungs are toward their rear the male's copulatory organs are up front, on both ends of feelers....Their skeletons are both inside and out, their excretory organs bear almost no analogy to ours whatsoever...and their metabolic rates are so low that we could arguably call them "the living dead!" I'm looking forward to studying these crazy bastards. I will have to buy crickets from now on for food...but no more than 7 or 8 a month.....Tarantulas can go over 2 years without food. If that isn't pure evil wickedness...I don't know what is. Ok I'm gonna stop creamin' now.