Friday, August 22, 2008

The Adventures of Rosie the Tarantula

I came back to the office last week with goodies for my wee-beasties. It was feeding time which usually happens every couple of weeks. I dumped a few crickets in with Debbie, my Goliath Bird-eating tarantula. She usually gets live mice about once a month, but she's been acting a bit odd lately and didn't eat her last mouse, so I think she's getting ready to molt. At this point I'm just waiting for her to get on with it. Next came Tiny, my Texas brown tarantula and the Scolopendra centipede. The centipede, as always, jumped on the crickets immediately. I came to Rosie's tank and imagine my horror and surprise when I noticed the lid was askew. For some reason, I still felt the need to search the tank for her, hoping that she might be in there somehow. To understand how ridiculous it was for me to do this, you need to know that the tank has substrate on the bottom and a water dish with gravel in it. I took all the plant material for hiding out last time I cleaned the tank because it was growing something. Even in my panic, I had to laugh....at least it wasn't Debbie. People in the office would freak out if she got out since she's so huge!


So, what do I do now? Do I let someone know just in case Rosie wanders off? There's a pretty good space under my door that it would be no problem for her to get out of my office. Parts of the office are being renovated at the moment, so there is furniture, boxes, books, etc. piled everywhere in offices and hallways. My office has a pathway that allows me to get to my desk. There was no way I could go search for Rosie; there was too much stuff in the way. I decided that I was going to keep the matter of Rosie's escape to myself. Hopefully if someone found her they would come a get me instead of squishing her or maybe she'll show up crawling across the floor or up the wall one day.

Tuesday, I turned around in my chair to take one of my all too frequent trips to the restroom (BB likes squishing Mommy's bladder) and guess who was waltzing out from behind my mini fridge- Rosie! I quickly picked her up and put her back into her tank. This time I secured the lid with a large rock on one side and a marble award thing I had on my bookshelf. She's now happily chilling in her tank, resting up from her big adventure in the open.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh lord, thank god you didn't post this last week before I came into the office for phone duty. I would have had major paranoia.

Wizzie Brown said...

Everyone is now contained and accounted for. I've gone through to make sure there will be no more escapes too!