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where you found them

  • Thread starter Ant
  • Start date
  • #21
The stories I could tell about escaped pets.

The worse one was the escaped black widows, but I've told that one here before. That was a nightmare.

I have two other stories I can tell.

1. I had a hamster. She was black and very friendly. She had one of those tube cages, and I had trouble keeping one of the end caps on. I was in a hurry one day and I saw it was about to come off again. I was having trouble getting it back on, so I grabbed some duct tape and taped it and then put that end against the wall. A couple of days passed and I kept putting off fixing it. It seemed to work better than the end cap any way. About a week later when I was cleaning her cage, I noticed that she chewed through the tape. Not only had she chewed through the tape but she chewed through the drywall. I looked into the hole in the wall and she chewed out the other side too.

Funny thing is that I never missed her. Apparently she would go out and gather food at night and then return to her cage before I woke up. She had a lot of dry dog food in her cage and not long after that I found a massive pile of dog food in one of my closets.

2. I had built a large reptile enclosure. It's over 6 ft tall and 29' x29'. During the winter I put my neps in there and if we have a warm spell in the winter, I'll take them outside.

The enclosure has other plants and hiding places for the reptiles, so it's not uncommon for me not to see one for a few days. I soon noticed that I only saw one of my water dragons. I did a quick look for it but couldn't find it. Still that wasn't too unusual. As the weeks went on I slowly realized that she must have been in one of the neps when I took it outside.

I alway search the neps really good before putting them out just to make sure this doesn't happen. I know that I searched them but some how she escaped and that is the only way I could think she could have gotten out.

A couple of months go by and I had realized that she was really gone for good.

The about three months later I was sitting outside in my swing and I heard a scratching noise in one of my nep pots. I looked up and in one of the drain holes I see a green foot sticking out. Of course I'm not thinking that this is the water dragon. My first thought was that it was an anole, then I get a good look at the foot and I start wondering what it is. I get up and look and it's the waterdragon inside the bottom of the pot. The bottom has a drainage cavity, and the drain hole is about the size of a dime. The water dragon is over 2 feet long. So I start digging through the dirt because there is no way I could get her out of that little hole. When I almost have dug down to her she just flies right of the dime size hole like it's nothing. She crawls up my shoulder and I grab her.

She had lived through the winter inside my nep pot. I guess she had also been catching food because she wasn't skinny. My wife said she saw a lizard running though the trees about a week before.
 
  • #22
Years ago, we discovered that a cat had knocked over my daughter's gold fish bowl and, we assumed, had eaten the goldfish. A while later, I was picking up some stuff on the floor and saw something under a dresser. It was the goldfish and it seemed dead, but I put some water on it and held it in the palm of my hand. Soon it was flopping around and I refilled its bowl and that fish lived for a long time afterwards.

had same thing whit my fish it jumped out of the tank and appeared dead but when i threw it back in it's aquarium it was reborn :-O
 
  • #23
Ozzy, what is the black widow story! LOL! I wouldn't even buy a black widow in the first place, most small spiders disturb me, and black widow getting out in my house, the would give me nightmares everytime I closed my eyes. The house would go up for sale and when its sold I would tell them about the black widows!
 
  • #24
Ozzy, what is the black widow story! LOL! I wouldn't even buy a black widow in the first place, most small spiders disturb me, and black widow getting out in my house, the would give me nightmares everytime I closed my eyes. The house would go up for sale and when its sold I would tell them about the black widows!
OK you asked for it.

Be warned that you'll probably have nightmares over this.

It started when I found some black widows at work.

I found the original post.

http://www.terraforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100193&highlight=black+widow

On Fridays at work, I work at the main plant of the water treatment system we are building. Today we got an assignment that was way out in the middle of nowhere and I found some black widows in the cracks of the hatch to one of the water tanks. Before we left I got a cup, put in pine straw and then I caught the most obvious spider. I put her in the cup and we headed back to the main plant.
There was one guy that is working with us that is scared of everything, lizards, snakes and spiders. LOL, So you know I had fun with him today. Before we got in the truck he asked, "Are you going to have that thing in the truck with us?" I said "Yes, you want to hold it?" I then said "You know this is going to be a long ride to the plant."

We got in the truck and there was three of us. He told me I had to ride in the middle so he could get out of the truck if he had too. When we got in the truck I took the cup and offered it to him and asked "do you want to hold my spider?" He said "Get that thing away from me!"

So then I opened the lid and I saw she was in the bottom of the cup so I put my face down in the cup and said "I love the smell of pine straw." Then I stuck the cup in his face and asked "Do you like the way pine straw smells?" I can repeat what he said here but I'm sure you get the idea. lol.

Then we were almost to the main plant and I thought I would pull the smelling the pine straw stunt on him again. I took the top of, but this time the spider was at the top of the cup and started to crawl out. I was going to just tap the cup and make her go back in the cup, but he grabbed my arm, out of fear I guess and started pushing my arm. He was sreaming "IT"S GETTING OUT!" I was trying to get it back in but he kept pushing my arm. I was sitting right next to the driver. He kept pushing my arm (with the spider on it) towards the driver. we're going down a dirt road at about 50 mph with a black widow spider loose in the truck and I'm trying to get it back in the cup and the guy on my right is trying to get the spider as far away from him as possiable, which means towards the driver. The driver is yelling "Hey I'm trying to drive" I managed to get it back in the cup. I asked him "How did you expect me to get it back in the cup with him pushing my arm like that?"

Anyway, I'll try and get some pics this weekend.
Then she laid an egg sac. So I thought cool "baby spiders"

Then I started thinking what was I going to do with all those spiders

I took the egg sac and put it in the same cup I caught the spider. Then I put a paper towel over it and put a rubberband around it. Apparently there was a tiny tear in the paper towel, and when they hatched, a few escaped. I put the cup outside and caught the few that escaped, and then put those outside too.

Then she momma spider made another egg sac. This time I left it in her cage. I had a very fine screen top on the tank, so I didn't think the babies could get out.

They hatched and by the time I realized that they could get out, it was too late. There was thousands of baby black widows hiding somewhere in my room. Oh I forgot to mention that I was keeping them in my bedroom.

I love black widows but I decided that keeping them just wasn't for me, so I put the tank along with most of the babies outside.

I still had the problem of the babies that got free in my room. They would spin a web and fly around my room. I would be watching TV and suddenly a baby black widow would fly right across the screen. I would be on my PC and I'd see one hanging from it's web right in front of my eyes while it's web was attached to my hair. They were everywhere. Thousands of them!

I finally found where they were all hiding. I gathered them all up and put them outside. For about a week I still saw them flying around my room.

I wasn't really worried about them while they were babies, but I was worried that a few of them would co undetected, grow up and then decide to make it's web in my boot or somewhere else that I couldn't see. Thank GOD that didn't happen.
 
  • #25
well you "think" there all gone. lol that is a tremandous story
 
  • #26
my fish tank broke one time and i had a bunch of danio's, i wasnt sure of the number and i guess i must have forgotten a few. a year later i found 3 crusty shrucken head looking fish on the ground
 
  • #27
Um, ozzy LOL!!!!!:-)) I almost died! I couldn't breathe! Atleast I don't have any of those spiders here in MA! :banana2: No nightmares for me, and also ozzy, if you let them outside I would be checking your stuff everytime you put something on!
 
  • #28
Ant i live in RI and we both are states have something called a brown recluse wich decomposes flesh and can kill people, very common too
 
  • #29
if you let them outside I would be checking your stuff everytime you put something on!

I'm not worried. Spiders are like snakes, they usually only bite as a last resort.

If I find a black widow I sometimes hold them. They have no interest in biting people unless they think their life is in danger. As long as you don't try to hold them down, they are fine. I do the same thing with bees and wasps.

We have brown recluses here too. They scare me a little more than the black widows but they still won't bite unless they fell trapped, and a bite from either one is not fatal unless you are allergic to the venom.
 
  • #30
HPLH, I was in RI last year. I went to the NECPS meeting in Providence. You should check them out, they are a great group of people.
 
  • #31
Heh, I have a similar story Ozzy. When i was 10 or so, my mom was a part time folk musician and she dragged me along to pick up some CDs she recorded. Well, this building had that typical, glass with metal square tubing dividing the panes, deal on the outside. And there were black widow webs in the corners.

So one day i decided to bring along a plastic jar to capture one of the ladies. I tapped the rim along one web and sure enough, big fat spider popped into the jar. I put the lid on and took it home with mom's permission. I put it in a glass aquarium with a cloth top (avoiding your fatal mistake Ozzy). I kept it in there, popping in the occasional carpenter ant or two.

Now, I should mention, I was a bit arachnophobic. But i guess my curiosity won out in this excursion.

Anywho, one day, she made up 2 or three egg sacks..... Well, arachnophobia got the better of me. I never opened that thing again. The sacks hatched and thanks to my ingenious cloth system, no babies came out. I eventually just kicked the whole aquarium outside and never touched it again.
 
  • #32
My only real "lost pet" was never found again... which wouldn't be that weird except for the fact that it was a fish. I had bought two oto cats to clean up the algae in my 10-gal tank, and about a week later I noticed that I was only seeing one of them. I searched all over the floor, the sides of the tank, under furniture, the closet (the tank was next to that at the time), tore the whole aquarium apart, and never found the slightest trace of the fish. The furniture in my room has since been totally rearranged, and the tank has undergone a few major cleanings since... and still never a trace. I only had a dwarf gourami and a few neon tetras at the time, I strongly doubt that they made a meal of him... but i do sometimes wonder where he wound up!
 
  • #33
Lol, I used to have about 15 neon tetras, and one day I checked on them and there was only 3 left. They ate eachother...
 
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