Escaped T's - what happened and how long did it take you to get them back?

Storm76 · Feb 4, 2012

I think this one could actually be funny and educational at the same time. So what T escaped on you and how did you manage to get it back in their tank (if at all!)?

I hear the worst story from someone on a German forum that had his P.regalis escape on him while doing some tank maintenance. It ran out of the room and he wasn't quick enough to see where it went. So he searched for like 2hrs, wasn't able to find it, but left the tank open "in case it would return" (never heard of escaped specimens actually "coming back home", but whatever...) and went to bed.
He woke up because his arm was itching and then his wife laying next to him actually jumped (well, he said "teleported") out of the bed pointing at his arm. Well, his 7" P. regalis came cuddling with its owner at night obviously. He was able to catch it safely with no harm to human or animal, but yeah...I wouldn't even be able to sleep knowing one of those is roaming through my app freely...

catfishrod69 · Feb 4, 2012

Thats a crazy story. Atleast no harm came to him or the T. I have had 2 escapes. One was a C. elegans. Which was 1/16" so there was no chance of finding it. Another was a 3" P. cancerides i think, but i found only a peice left of it. I think a mouse found it before i did.

Moonbug · Feb 4, 2012

I guess the P.regalis was ready to come back after his little escape adventure! That is sweet that he came back to his owner like that. Hehehe!
Thanks for sharing!

Storm76 · Feb 4, 2012

Yeah, but I would've had a HARD time being able to even go to bed. I mean, it's one thing if a T escapes and is somewhere in a closed room. You could probably check the next day then if there's no chance that it could venture into the other rooms of the app. But one roaming freely in your app? Uhm...I am actually rather surprised that his wife was able to sleep, considering she isn't really the person being into T's, but more or less just "accepts" her husbands hobby...

Anonymity82 · Feb 4, 2012

My ~1" OBT. When I first got it 6 weeks ago, I had no idea how fast it was going to be. I was picking around it's enclosure around 2am when it flew out and up my and under my shirt. I wasn't really worried bout being bitten, I just didn't want to crush. So I went into my bedroom and yelled at my sleeping fiance to follow me into the bath tub where I stripped slowly as she kept telling me where it was heading to next. I was finally down to my boxers and able to get him back into his little enclosure. I now have a .5" B. vagans too and what a difference! He's a slowpoke!

Frostbite · Feb 4, 2012

I had an adult female A. seemani escape from my daughter while I was on a business trip in the 90's. She was "out" and living in the laundry room for several weeks. She kept a water dish out and would let a cricket loose now and then until I got home. The cat found it once and got bit on the chin. Finally found it living under the water softener and was able to recapture it. Recently lost an adult female B. boehmi (6 months ago) and have never found it. With kitty litter box in the basement where my spider room is, I can't tell if there was even a smell or not.....

madamoisele · Feb 5, 2012

A few days ago, I was breeding my Tappy's (t. cupreus), and when I opened the lid to let the male out, he teleported down the side of the glass cage and disappeared into the furniture. I stopped and stared for a moment, considered, and then decided - "Oh well - it's a male tappy. Maybe he'll be out later." Since he had already done the deed nicely, I wasn't overly miffed.

The next day, I came home from work to find him lounging on the bathroom wall. Since it's blue and he's tan, he stuck out like a sore thumb. I easily recaptured him. Case closed!

Then there was the a. versicolor spiderling (1") that somehow managed to escape from its cage (I still have no idea how, it looks impossible to me - I thought maybe he died and I just wasn't seeing the body!). He's currently living in a tube web he's made for himself up in a little hole in my ceiling. I can see him, but the tube is inside the hole, so I can't get him out. Sometimes I see blue legs sticking out on the ceiling. I figure he's harmless and since I live in the country, he's bound to find something to eat. Escaped crickets and what not. I'm hoping eventually he'll make a web somewhere better for me and I'll be able to get him back.

But still - it's kinda cute that he's up here. I can see the web from where I'm sitting.

Storm76 · Feb 5, 2012

Frostbite said:
I had an adult female A. seemani escape from my daughter while I was on a business trip in the 90's. She was "out" and living in the laundry room for several weeks. She kept a water dish out and would let a cricket loose now and then until I got home. The cat found it once and got bit on the chin. Finally found it living under the water softener and was able to recapture it. Recently lost an adult female B. boehmi (6 months ago) and have never found it. With kitty litter box in the basement where my spider room is, I can't tell if there was even a smell or not.....

How the heck do you manage to "lose" your spiders, man?

Frostbite · Feb 5, 2012

Storm76 said:
How the heck do you manage to "lose" your spiders, man?

My daughter didn't latch the lid on the seemani after she fed it and it just pushed the lid up and took off during the night. These things are strong! The B. boehmi was in a food container. I had just purchased her and didn't realize how weak the top was. Once more, she pushed the lid up and escaped over night.

I consider myself lucky as I have been keeping Tarantulas since 1992 and my collection has been as high as 100 critters. Now, if a pokie got out, I think I would not sleep in the house until I found it. I would not want to wake up and see a pokie on my arm. Especially if it wasn't happy with what I had been feeding it.....

Ultum4Spiderz · Feb 5, 2012

catfishrod69 said:
Thats a crazy story. Atleast no harm came to him or the T. I have had 2 escapes. One was a C. elegans. Which was 1/16" so there was no chance of finding it. Another was a 3" P. cancerides i think, but i found only a peice left of it. I think a mouse found it before i did.

that sucks

my lost 2" obt died & was never found 2 yrs ago
an adult P conceridies would kill a mouse in a heartbeat sorry your 3" juvie was eaten.

sorry for your losses

pandapump · Feb 5, 2012

a fellow forum lost its p. murinus 2 "and found it a year later, in a room where they kept the old stuff to the bottom of p. murinus had its lair .... true story!

AlexRC · Feb 5, 2012

madamoisele said:
Then there was the a. versicolor spiderling (1") that somehow managed to escape from its cage (I still have no idea how, it looks impossible to me - I thought maybe he died and I just wasn't seeing the body!). He's currently living in a tube web he's made for himself up in a little hole in my ceiling. I can see him, but the tube is inside the hole, so I can't get him out.

My little A. Versi sling is hella quick, almost got away on me last week when I was transferring him to his new cage, but I got him back. Ran straight up the side of my bearded dragons cage and almost slipped in through a gap in the sliding glass, but luckily he didn't go the extra 2 inches or else it would've been a disaster for him and maybe of the dragons. I was able to catch him safely with a spare cup i had laying around for just the occasion.
Sounds kinda cool that yours is living like that, it'd be cool if they could all just roam free and about safely as some other pets do.
Hope you're able to get him back safely and still healthy one day.

grayzone · Feb 5, 2012

i just lost my 1st t 2 weeks ago.. it was a B.albo (1/4" max) and it must have escaped through the ventilation. i questioned myself if that would happen, but i chose to think less of the situation, and learned my lesson... maybe one day itll pop back up , but i doubt it. On a side note, a few days ago i was rough housing with my pit and i noticed one of his overly large legs was swollen bad. he had a limp and was babying his leg pretty bad. i made him a cold compress, and all is normal. i am wondering if the irritation could be spider bite related? hampton (my pit) is a huge amstaff . he is 9 mo old and tops in at over 90lbs easy already (he will be HUGE, his parents are working/pulling dogs). do you think a bitty sling could hurt an animal this large? maybe a pokie, but surely not a curly haired right?

killy · Feb 5, 2012

I've submitted many a post on this subject (check this one out ... http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/sho...ebody-ask-quot-How-strong-is-a-tarantula-quot ...), and, as your introduction so correctly states, it's been a learning curve for me over the last couple of years. My B. smithi (named Houdini after his first out-of-enclosure experience) is the most notorious escape artist of the bunch, although I've gotten him back both times. I've figured out how he does this, and the lid to his enclosure is now weighted. My versi, Speedy, as his name implies, took enough leaps into the void that I don't handle him anymore. And my first A geniculata, Rocky, disappeared over a year ago, never to be seen again, at least not by my eyes. This getaway was purely through dumb negligence on my part (I forgot to replace the lid after a feeding), and my advice to all of you on that one is: do as I say, not as I did, but which I'm now doing - FER CRYIN' OUT LOUD, BE CAREFUL! These critters are hard-wired to know when the coast is clear, squeeze through impossibly small spaces, and make themselves scarce!

Simon83 · Feb 5, 2012

My chilean rose, Sophia, escaped on me twice. Both totally my fault to be fair. I brought her a new enclosure but they didn't have the right lid to go with it so I just used a piece of cardboard and placed it on top of the enclosure. This was fine for a couple of weeks until I left the corner open a little bit...I came home from work to find the enclosure empty. I was so mad at myself but thankfully I found her in my bedroom next to my bed...and even more thankfully before I went to bed lol. I started to make sure her cardboard lid was more secure by sticking a couple of dvd cases on top for extra weight. This didn't help at all because Sophia remembered how to get out and was strong enough to get through without the extra weight. Impressive really considering how many more times stronger the dvd cases were. This was just before I left for work and she was right next to her enclosure so it looked like she had only just gotten out.

Long story short, I learned my lesson and got a proper lid for her after the two escapes

Embers To Ashes · Feb 5, 2012

The only escape I've had was with my MM A. versi. I found him in the bathroom chillin on a pile of dirty laundry before I even noticed he was missing. Before that, he escaped and I found him trying to get into the females tank.

JanesLastResort · Feb 5, 2012

madamoisele said:
Then there was the a. versicolor spiderling (1") that somehow managed to escape from its cage (I still have no idea how, it looks impossible to me - I thought maybe he died and I just wasn't seeing the body!). He's currently living in a tube web he's made for himself up in a little hole in my ceiling. I can see him, but the tube is inside the hole, so I can't get him out. Sometimes I see blue legs sticking out on the ceiling. I figure he's harmless and since I live in the country, he's bound to find something to eat. Escaped crickets and what not. I'm hoping eventually he'll make a web somewhere better for me and I'll be able to get him back.

But still - it's kinda cute that he's up here. I can see the web from where I'm sitting.

Mind=blown

That's crazy.

Quazgar · Feb 5, 2012

I dropped the enclosure to a 1" P. irminia. By the time I got down to the floor to look for it (about .5 seconds...), it was GONE. My wife found it about a week later as she was getting into the shower (oh, did I forget to tell you, honey...)

Necromion · Feb 6, 2012

ive had 1.5 escape attempts, the major one was when my mature female H. villosella ran up over the tweezers up my arm and dove into the cover of my shirt, well i thought she had jumped ended up tearing my whole room apart for like 2 hours. And then I started to feel something moving under my shirt across my back. ripped my shirt off and sure enough in the my shirt there she was.

now for the half escape attempt. I came home one day from college to find the vial containing my A. metallica sling to have its cap popped off and empty. I thought I had lost the T for good however about 6 in. away from the cage was the T silly thing. I guess she decided that escape wasn't worth it or just wanted somefresh air.

Storm76 · Feb 7, 2012

Quazgar said:
I dropped the enclosure to a 1" P. irminia. By the time I got down to the floor to look for it (about .5 seconds...), it was GONE. My wife found it about a week later as she was getting into the shower (oh, did I forget to tell you, honey...)

My GF would probably KILL me if I'd do something like that...but funny story!

Escaped T's - what happened and how long did it take you to get them back?

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