By Holly A. Hook
This is my tarantula site. For my books, short movies, and games, click HERE.
Baby Mexican Red Knee Tarantula- later named Suzie
Some people collect stamps. Other people collect trading cards. But me? I collect tarantulas.
So, why did I decide to collect big, hairy spiders? Why don’t I recoil when I see one? Psychologists say that we may be born with an innate, instinctive fear of spiders, but in my opinion, this isn’t true. I think that the fear of spiders (or lack of) is taught and learned from a young age. Every person I have met with arachnophobia either 1.) grew up with a parent who had the same fear or 2.) had a bad experience with spiders in the past.
I grew up without either of these things. When my mother found something with eight legs in the house, she’d never say “Oh, squish it!” Instead, she’d say something like “Come look at this cool spider over here! Let’s take it outside.” My mother always said that she wanted a tarantula, but my father refused to have one in the house. So the closest we could get was watching documentaries about them on TV or going to a pet store and gawking at the ones for sale.
When finishing college I got my first tarantula, a Rose Hair from the local Petco. After that, buying tarantulas slowly became a sort of addiction to me as I explored different species and types. And during this time I found that, contrary to popular belief, tarantulas make great pets.
Why? Here’s a list of reasons below:
1. Many tarantulas are actually less dangerous than hamsters. Many species are docile enough to be handled (if you use care and know what you’re doing) with a very low risk of being bitten. I have handled several different species without being bitten once. However, I was bitten by the classroom hamster in the third grade just for trying to change its water.
2. It’s a myth that tarantula bites are fatal. Most bites, if they do occur, are little more than pinpricks with some pain around the wound. There are some species with more serious bites, however, from Africa and Asia. But even these bites have never resulted in a recorded death. And the species with the serious bites are never docile enough to be handled, anyway.
3. Tarantulas are cheap once you acquire them. Granted, some species are very expensive to purchase, but once yours, a single tarantula may cost less than a dollar a month to feed. Crickets, their usual food, are about a dime apiece. Adults need to eat maybe a cricket or two a week. My entire collection (25 tarantulas) can be fed for about fifteen dollars a month at the most.
4. Tarantulas are easy to house. Most can be kept in those plastic Kritter Keeper containers, as long as there’s substrate, a water dish, and a hide of some sort. Tree tarantulas may need a branch or two to web on as well as a taller container. How humid you need to keep the container and how deep the substrate needs to be depends on the species.
5. Most people think that tarantulas are all black and hairy. While some are, there’s many more that come in every color of the rainbow. I literally have a specimen of every color. See the species list to the right for more details.
6. Tarantulas are quiet. They don’t wake you up at 5 a.m. wanting to be fed.
7. Female tarantulas can live up to 30 years or more.
8. You don’t have to take your tarantula out for walks.
9. Tarantulas are clean. Their containers only need cleaning once every several months or so.
10. If vacuum cleaner salesmen come up to your door, you have a means of getting them to leave you alone quickly.
At this time I have twenty-seven tarantulas, which I keep in a closed off area that I call the Spider Room. (I also have two cats and must keep them separated.) Posted to the right is a list of the species that I keep and some information on that particular species, based on my personal experience. Please note that this section is under construction and photos are not yet available for all entries.
The Spider Room 