Damon medius scare!

cwebster · Sep 13, 2019

Came home, significant other said he had bad news, that Elvira was dead. This morning, she was hanging upside down on the cage top. Tonight,she was on her back, on the floor of the cage, seemingly lifeless. Misted the cage and took her out to examine her. Then saw very dark long feet moving to Hide behind the cork bark. Elvira had shed! Her shed skin was intact. Measured it...12 inches across. We are so relieved she is still with us.

hibiscusmile · Sep 16, 2019

ph! haha, so scary!

mantisfan101 · Sep 17, 2019

Ah, always hate it when that happens...I once had someone tell me that my a. seemani was dead only to find it halfway through a molt

sschind · Mar 5, 2020

I know exactly how you felt. When I first got into Tarantulas I knew all about the molting obviously but I was not aware they did it upside down. I came into my shop one morning to find one of my adults upside down and I thought it was dead. I put it in the back of the store and went about my daily tasks. At the end of the day I went to clean out the tank and found a very healthy very vibrant new tarantula standing over her shed skin as if to say "look what I just did. Aren't you proud of me" I'm just glad I didn't throw it out right away.

Several months later I came in and again she was on her back so I just left her this time. Pretty much every customer told me I had a dead tarantula when they saw her but none of them wanted to bet on it. The cool thing about it this time was that she lay there for the whole day not moving but about an hour before closing I noticed her starting to move a bit so I pulled up a chair and sat for an hour and 15 minutes and watched the entire process. It was probably the only time I was happy that there were no customers in the store.

It always amazes me how perfect the whip scorpion molts are. I've got hundreds of various sizes with a batch going through another molt right now and I would like to mount them somehow but I just can't figure out a way that looks nice. It doesn't help that they are so fragile and I have no patience not to mention I am clumsy as heck.