Escapes do happen - Sparassidae spp.

I have had a few escaped spiders and ant queens now. Mostly they happen when you are transferring a spider from one home to another, you expect this to happen and you can deal with them pretty quickly by having a plastic deli cup close by. Some of my escapes happened not when transferring but when the containers proved not be perfectly suited to the creature, such as my wolf spider (Hogna carolinensis) spider Fred, who pried himself between two layers of plexiglass and made a permanent escape, or my false black widow spider (Steatoda gross), Mavis who disappeared through the gap in the lid of a terrarium never to be seen or heard from again, like socks in a dryer. And there are still a few of Margaret's babies wandering around the house, if you recall one of my previous posts.

My spider room also happens to by my guest room, and more than once I have lied to house guests about having never had any escapees. There is no point in frightening people when all of my spiders are basically harmless anyway, right?  Jenn, I hope you aren't reading this right now, but if you are please forgive me, nothing bad happened, right??

But yesterday's escape of my huntsman spider (Sparassidae spp.), Ginger, was particularly unique, and a little problematic. The top of Ginger's container is attached with Velcro.  Usually the noise of prying off the lid is enough to send her running for cover, but yesterday for some reason, as I was flipping the lid off, she flipped herself over and somehow launched herself at the lid, then ran off of it and down the container, across the desk and up into the bucket that I keep my crickets in before I could blink.  Huntsmen are stupid fast. I guess she really was hungry, because she immediately caught and started consuming a cricket.  Problem was she was now in container with very rounded sides, and every time I tried to corner her with a deli container she simply ran out the gaps on the top of it, and headed for the opening, where (panicking only slightly) I scooted her back down with an energy bill.  It took awhile to catch her, and in the meantime, I estimated she caught about 5 crickets and was slowly digesting them into a gooey disgusting ball.

Not my usual feeding protocol, at least it didn't used to be.

This led me to think about how I have been feeding all of my huntsman spiders, and led to today's experiment with Huntsman #2. I have been giving these guys a cricket a day through the top of the container, and often removing the uneaten cricket the next day from the bottom.  After this incident, today I took the bottom off of the other Huntsman's container, took the moist cotton out that I use as a pseudo substrate, and put about 15 crickets in there instead.  Sure enough, Huntsman #2, "Nicey", descended after a few minutes and started gobbling until she also had massive gob of grossness in her mouth.  I think I have been doing this all wrong, but now I know how these guys need to eat!

My huntsman containers, Costco food containers with the top cut out and plexiglass velcroed on.