How long before a traumatized spider is "Out of the woods"?

Tim Benzedrine

Prankster Possum
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Apr 4, 2004
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Due to an incident involving a .45 caliber rifle and an african dwarf frog, I ended up with an injured G. Rosea. When the dust settled from the rosie's cage dropping 4 foot and spilling it's contents, the result was a spider leaking fluid from what appeared to be the vicinity of the right front leg. I'd say the amount was a dollop about the diameter of a pinky finger nail. The abdomen appears to be intact.

I got her back in her keeper and put a water source back in it and covered it with a towel for darkness to help reduce stress. She has travelled across the tank overnite so she isn't incapacitated. I see no signs of further fluid loss as of this writing, the injury happened roughly nine hours ago. At the moment she is kind of huddled in the corner of the keeper, but does not look particularily unnatural. I haven't seen whether the suspected injured leg is ambulatory or not.

So, what I am wondering is, in the worst case scenario, how much time would pass before any internal injuries would take their toll? Do they linger, or do they die pretty quickly from internal injuries? Would a week be a large enough window of time for me to breathe a sigh of relief? How soon before I should try to introduce food to see if she shows any interest? (Of course,her being a rosie, appetite won't be much of an indicator, I realize.)

I'm pretty concerned. I've had 4 other T's over the years and this was the first to not wind up being a male. So I rather hate to lose her. I'm hoping I lucked out on this one.
 

Mike H.

Arachnoprince
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Jan 25, 2004
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Its hard to put a time frame on an injured animals recovery time...give her a couple weeks to settle down and make sure she has fresh water...put her in the house somewhere that is very quiet and dark and just leave her be...I would wait at least a good week to 10 days before offering her food as well...hopefully some peace and quiet will help with her mending...

Regards, Mike :rolleyes:
 

tarantula666

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Jul 21, 2004
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Due to an incident involving a .45 caliber rifle and an african dwarf frog, I ended up with an injured G. Rosea
i'm wondering what happend...... did you try to shoot the frog? :?
or did the frog freak out when it saw the spider and did it pull out a gun in self defense ??? :eek:
 

spidergoddess

spidergoddess
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May 23, 2004
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Tim Benzedrine said:
Due to an incident involving a .45 caliber rifle and an african dwarf frog, I ended up with an injured G. Rosea.
Damn those rifle-toting frog dwarves!

Seriously, sorry for the trouble your G. rosea has suffered, and I hope she comes through all right. Sounds like you are doing the best you can for her. Best of luck.
 

Ultimate Instar

Arachnobaron
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Aug 20, 2002
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457
I hate to add to your anxiety, but I dropped a 2" M. robustum sling about three feet. After thoroughly cursing my clumsiness, I examined it and there appeared to be no damage. Unfortunately, it died about one month later. I can't say for sure that the drop killed it but I'm suspicious.

Karen N.
 

mouse

Arachnolord
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Jul 3, 2004
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603
sorry to hear that your rosie got hurt.
just incase...should she still "bleed"...you could try new-skin liquid bandage... just a thought.
hope she feels better soon
dianne
 

Tim Benzedrine

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Thanks for the tips. She has moved around some more, she crawled across the keeper I have her in since I posted originally.

Here is what happened.

I keep my rosie in a keeper on my chest of drawers. On top of he cage I sit a "jar" containing an african dwarf frog. I know, a jar is not exactly the best way to keep an ADF, but this bugger was a well meant Christmas gift. I've never kept amphibians, nor have ever been interested in doing so, so I've just kept him as I would a goldfish, changing his water daily and fedding him. He's been going strong for over a year and a half now, so I guess he could be worse off. But I digress...

Above the chest of drawers , mounted on the wall is a gun rack. Full of guns. With a .45 caliber flintlock on the very top. Well, I was trying to organize things a bit, and I had another rifle, (a .50 cal percussion, if it matters) that was leaning in the corner.
"Why not scoot the .45 back and perch the .50 in front of it?" I asked myself. So I gave it a try.

That's where things went wrong. In placing the .50 caliber, I jarred loose the .45 caliber which came crashing down. I managed to keep the other rifle from falling and watched in horror as the .45 fell, smacked the frog jar and knocked it to the floor. It then proceeded to sweep the keeper off of the top of the chrst of drawers AND knocked over a big stack of empty CD jewel cases I had stacked nearby.

So, what I had was a amalgamation of water,a frog on the loose and my Rosie somewhere underneath a pile of substrate and an overturned keeper.
I'm pretty sure that later, legend will have it that a great blight killed all of the surrounding foliage for miles, blasted by my obscenities. I'll just attribute it to gypsy moths.

Miserably I gathered up my Rosie, who just seemed to be crawling away from the whole mess and put her in the totally devastated keeper. After a quick inspection, I then had to turn my attention to the frog, which I had NO idea what had become of. Luckily, as stupid as I had been thru the whole ordeal, I wasn't so stupid as to not know that dirt encrusted lumps usually do not hop, so I spotted a lump that really seemed like it was trying to get back to Africa, scooped it up and rushed it to where I keep it's back-up jar. A quick rinse in some spring water and it looked and acted like nothing had happened. Other than an accusing "Dumbass!" look it gave me, but I may have imagined that.

So I went back to getting the T settled, and that's when I noticed that it was leaking fluid. Which prompted my original post. I went for brevity, because as you can see, the details made for a long and possibly dull post.

Mind you, the events I've related are described as best I can based on the occurrences that seemed to take several minutes. It was all over in a couple of seconds.

The frog still looks annoyed.

:(
 

tarantula666

Arachnosquire
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Jul 21, 2004
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140
that is one of my greatest fears , that by doing somthing "stupid" i will hurt my lovely spiders,
so when i take care of them , cleaning , feeding , changing the waterdish etc
i make sure all unnecaserry clutter is removed
which is fairly easy , i keep my B. auratum in a tank on the dining table (plenty of room there) and my G.rosea is in a tank on a cubboard ( a little less space there, but enough )

soon i will be expanding my hobby and will create a wall for all the tanks.
will post pic's when i get there.

keep us updated on how your rosea is doing
 

Tim Benzedrine

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Apr 4, 2004
Messages
1,496
Wow, I really had to dig for this, but I thought I might give an update in order to reassure other folks who make some kinda bone-head manouever like I did.

The Rosie made a full recovery. Last night, for the first time since the incident, she ate. Three crickets, one right after the other. I don't know what sort of injury caused the loss of fluid that I mentioned originally, but all of her appendages are in full working order, and there are no other outward signs of trauma. And I'm gonna assume that if she ate, the chances of internal injuries having occurred are pretty non-existant at this point.
I think the think that had frightened me was the relatively large drop of fluid she lost. It was a dollop about the diameter of my pinkie fingernail, and seemed like a lot compared to the size of the spider. (She's probably between 4 and 5 inches measured in the standard method). What worried me the most though was the possibility of internal injuries. I'm sure that in nature they lose fluid in mishaps and survive. It's just that the apparent injuries are always more disturbing initially even if they are superficial in reality.


So, to my fellow klutzes out there, take hope. Not all disasters are fatal!
 

btorgy

Arachnopeon
Joined
Aug 19, 2004
Messages
23
Well! I found that a very good story, and your writing of it really entertaining! You could try some short stories or novels? Something to do with Tarantula's?!
Anyway, glad your critters are okay! We've all done stupid things before. Hopefully your animals will not suffer anything further from this incident!
 

WYSIWYG

SpiderLoco
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Joined
Jun 18, 2003
Messages
489
DULL!?!? Not at ALL!!! It was very well written and EXTREMELY
entertaining. I was laughing so hard, my husband came from
another part of the house to see what all the excitement was about.
He read it too and he got a good laugh.

Great story with some great tongue-in-cheek humor.

Hopefully your frog and your t get back to normal so you'll
feel better. :)

Wysi

Tim Benzedrine said:
Thanks for the tips. She has moved around some more, she crawled across the keeper I have her in since I posted originally.

Here is what happened.

I keep my rosie in a keeper on my chest of drawers. On top of he cage I sit a "jar" containing an african dwarf frog. I know, a jar is not exactly the best way to keep an ADF, but this bugger was a well meant Christmas gift. I've never kept amphibians, nor have ever been interested in doing so, so I've just kept him as I would a goldfish, changing his water daily and fedding him. He's been going strong for over a year and a half now, so I guess he could be worse off. But I digress...

Above the chest of drawers , mounted on the wall is a gun rack. Full of guns. With a .45 caliber flintlock on the very top. Well, I was trying to organize things a bit, and I had another rifle, (a .50 cal percussion, if it matters) that was leaning in the corner.
"Why not scoot the .45 back and perch the .50 in front of it?" I asked myself. So I gave it a try.

That's where things went wrong. In placing the .50 caliber, I jarred loose the .45 caliber which came crashing down. I managed to keep the other rifle from falling and watched in horror as the .45 fell, smacked the frog jar and knocked it to the floor. It then proceeded to sweep the keeper off of the top of the chrst of drawers AND knocked over a big stack of empty CD jewel cases I had stacked nearby.

So, what I had was a amalgamation of water,a frog on the loose and my Rosie somewhere underneath a pile of substrate and an overturned keeper.
I'm pretty sure that later, legend will have it that a great blight killed all of the surrounding foliage for miles, blasted by my obscenities. I'll just attribute it to gypsy moths.

Miserably I gathered up my Rosie, who just seemed to be crawling away from the whole mess and put her in the totally devastated keeper. After a quick inspection, I then had to turn my attention to the frog, which I had NO idea what had become of. Luckily, as stupid as I had been thru the whole ordeal, I wasn't so stupid as to not know that dirt encrusted lumps usually do not hop, so I spotted a lump that really seemed like it was trying to get back to Africa, scooped it up and rushed it to where I keep it's back-up jar. A quick rinse in some spring water and it looked and acted like nothing had happened. Other than an accusing "Dumbass!" look it gave me, but I may have imagined that.

So I went back to getting the T settled, and that's when I noticed that it was leaking fluid. Which prompted my original post. I went for brevity, because as you can see, the details made for a long and possibly dull post.

Mind you, the events I've related are described as best I can based on the occurrences that seemed to take several minutes. It was all over in a couple of seconds.

The frog still looks annoyed.

:(
 
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