New Pet...
Oh, wow! We got us a new pet! A Wolf Spider! It got in the house, so I figured it wanted to stay. Pictures will be forthcoming...The cat was chasing something and I thought it was another stinkin' roach. I moved the bag it ran under and - voila! A wolf spider! Woohoo! Now, for those of you who don't know, wolf spiders can be scary. In fact, when I worked for a pest control company, we got more calls for wolf spiders than any other pest. They look very dangerous, they're big and hairy (not as big as a tarantula), and they have wicked looking mouth parts. The first one that got into our house was about 3" from stem to stern. This one is about half that size.
So, I caught it with the intention of turning it loose outside. Then, I got the idea of looking it up on the web. Hmmm. Wolf spiders can live several years in captivity. Cool! So we started looking for a cage. We wound up buying one from a local exotic pet store for about 8 bucks. Feed it crickets for about a dime each. Put dirt in the cage, a cotton ball with water, and a rock for it to hide under, we're all set!
We brought the cage home and put the spider in it with a cricket. That cricket didn't stand a chance. It took about 30 minutes before it stopped twitching, though -- nature ain't pretty... But the girls watched it for about 10 minutes, giving me regular (about 15 second) updates as the cricket slowly died.
Now, I'm still researching this. I don't know if wolf spiders actually eat their prey or if they just suck the juice out of it. I can't seem to find that answer anywhere on the 'net, though I may be asking the wrong question. We also want to know if it's mature, and whether it's a boy or a girl. It's name is Wolfy.
We'll be posting updates. One writing assignment every week involves spider research until we've exhausted it. I'll post some of those writings (without corrections!) here.
I'm going to go watch our new pet! Adios!
posted by ClayMan @ 11:16 AM
2 Comments:
You could milk that vein of study for a very long time... taking it into the realm of mathematics, as well as just Reading / Writing and Science.
Think about Spider populations are exponential progressions
Hmmm - 1 spider has 300 babies. Half of those are females, so 150 of them have 300 babies, meaning 45,000 spiders in two generations. Hmmm. That's interesting! And scary!
I could create my own science fiction movie right in my daughter's bedroom! But I think she'd want Charlotte's Web...
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