Spiders are people too . . . .

Spiders are people too . . . .well no, of course they are not.  I have decidedly less than 8 legs, my canines, closest thing I have to fangs, got worn down years ago, and I am pretty sure I have no venom to inject anyway. I am not a spider, and a spider is not me. But the reason that this statement popped into my head is the concept that people tend to have of not-people.  For instance, in my family, my parents liked pure-bred spaniels.  They believed that if they got a pure-bred spaniel, they knew exactly what kind of dog they were getting, reasonably laid back, good with children, not too much barking, etc.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.  There were some great dogs, but there was one springer spaniel that we had to find a home for because it kept chasing cars, and another that had to be put down because it turned on my dad, unprovoked, and bit his arm badly enough to require stitches.  People seem to have a belief that a particular species of animal will come with a particular temperament and set of behaviors. You see this all the time when you look up species of tarantula on the internet.  You will find a care sheet that says that X species of tarantula is docile, rarely kicks hairs, good for beginners, or that Y species of tarantula is very defensive and will strike multiple times if threatened.  These aren't bad guidelines, and are probably generally true, but just like people, and dogs, spiders also have their own individual personalities.  I was prompted to write about this today, because I have a particularly extreme example occurring in my own house right now. I ordered two Hapalopus sp. spiderlings from TarantulaCanada.com.  They would have been from the same egg sac, I am guessing, but they couldn't be more different.

They come in a pill-bottle sized container, wrapped in a bit of gauze.  I pulled the first gauze out, and gently opened it up in the container that was to be "Lucius's" home.  Well, Lucius decided that it would be fun to run amok, and before I knew it, he was up the side of the container and down the other side and running laps around my bathroom counter top and up across the mirror.  I was chasing him all over, trying frantically to trap him under the container he came in before he managed to hit the floor and head for the rest of the house.  After I got him back in his pill bottle, I made a quick change to a taller, thinner container for him to live in, one that I hoped I could get closed before he streaked up the side and went AWOL again.  After I got him settled, I really thought, did I bite off more than I can chew this time?  I have two of these crazy things! I had tried to research this particular species before ordering, but hadn't found much about them.  The second one I opened with a great deal more caution, but I needn't have worried, getting this one to lumber out of the gauze and onto the soil took a very long time, and then he only went a few steps off the gauze and froze.  Since then, Lucius has mostly been hanging upside down on the screen at the top of the container, and has absolutely slaughtered the fruit flies and cricket that I have introduced.  Neville on the other hand, has taken up residence in his little coke-bottle-lid hiding spot and hasn't even peaked a leg out in 3 days.