Selfsufficientish.com

You have tarantulas? As pets?

Or are you talking about your big house spiders?

Yes I have 4 tarantulas at the moment.
The rest of the zoo includes a scorpion,4 american cornsnakes,A savanna monitor lizard called Prada,
2 cats named Loki and Wodan and 2 apple-snails.

My wife works as a volunteer for the local Animal Rescue,and we usually get the call if something non-fluffy turns up.
At one time we had to care for 4 adult savannah monitors and an illegaly imported nest of no less than 11 baby nile monitors.
I went through an amazing amount of band-aids during that period.

Wow how lovely, tarantulas! I'm a fan of the non-fluffy creatures too and always wanted African Land Snails, they're cool. No pets here though as we're away too often and wouldn't want to have anything that I couldn't look after full time. Great that your wife works at a rescue centre, guess you never know what she'll bring home!

I'm concerned about the cats..... Great menagerie, makes a change from chickens!

@ spider8
You mean the huge Achathina snails?
Not that hard to cater for.
A big plastic ''critterbox'' from the petstore will do just fine.
A nice layer of microwaved peat,a sheet of bark they can hide under and a piece of cuttlebone for their calcium needs and they'll do fine.
They'll eat almost any fruit or veg,and they'll even eat chickenfeed.
An 8W undertank heating pad is a must though,as well as maintaining high humidity.

The only downside is slime-encrusted enclosures...
That can be fixed by buying two critterboxes,so you can bung one in the dishwasher and transfer the snails to the other one.

Oh,and they can breed like rabbits...

@MMM

Norwegian forest cats...perfectly capable of despatching anything crawly.

If you are like me and dislike the big hairy house spiders but don't mind the spindley 'daddy long leg' spiders then get a few of those in, apparently they are the most viscious type and will kill all other bugs in your house, including the more scary looking house spiders! When I move I tend to take a few with me to release and any wolfies or house spiders that are hanging around disappear pretty quickly!

That's a gem, Gem!!! Taking spiders with you when you move house!

Yes, those are the ones Scrap but I'm not having any pets - except the ones with eight legs already in the house .

Honestly MMM, it really seems to work, when I moved last winter my house had a few resident 'big hairy nastys' and the spiders I brought with me (along with the ones that hitch-hiked in my moving boxes) took about 2 weeks to clean house!

They have formed a veritable colony now and are very polite houseguests, keeping out of the way in dark corners during the day, rarely hiding in my clothing or towels and they don't poop over my lapshades like some other nameless spiders might have!!!

I love them! (imagine the group hug with daddy long legs...)

But if they're the vicious ones they might be the ones that bite us humans! Something bites me occasionally in my sleep but I don't know what kind of spider it is.

The daddy long leg ones def don't have strong enough jaws to pierce human skin, just very strong poison, I checked that before inviting them in! As a general rule (there are occasional exceptions) its usually down to jaw size. If you see anything where you can visably see them knashing then its possible they could bite. Those with smaller jaws may have a go if you pick them up (feels like a very soft pinch) but they cant bite through.

House spiders (adults) do bite, as do the really big version of the garden spider which spins the big orb web.. Some wolf spiders are also able to (again only the larger, adult ones) and I understand you get those a lot over your way. Unfortunately they tend to be roamers so there is not much you can do about those.. (except fill your house with daddy long legs!)

You've been doing your homework! I don't even know what a wolf spider is.

We have Brian at the moment living in the cellar, he's one of those funnel web types who partially comes out at night with just 4-6 legs sticking out of his hole. He disappeared for a while and suddenly another one appeared in another part of the cellar who was enormous and very much an attack spider so I called him Boris (as in Karloff!!) as I saw him literally jump out of his hole and start prancing menacingly around a poor beetle. But then Boris seemed to disappear and then suddenly Brian came back!!

So you see I do watch them just don't know what kind of spiddy spider they are.

Millymollymandy wrote:very much an attack spider so I called him Boris

- surely that should be "as in Johnson"

Is he a blonde spider then Oooooh I love spiders!

You lot are giving me nightmares!! My dad was once bitten by a house spider, his thumb was numb for about 3 days - I think this is where my fear comes from although I did once have a tarantula walking on me because it was at school and I didn't want to bottle out in front of my class!