Jan 20 2009
Its Probably a Good Idea to Know What You are Buying BEFORE You Buy It….
Yesterday my partner and I were at one of our local pet stores, and I saw a tank with “Starburst Baboon” written across it in dark marker. A Starburst Baboon is a species of tarantula that I have so far steered away from because many of them are known to be aggressive. I did ask the sales person what the temperament on their spider was, and he said it was pretty hostile, so I wandered off to look at other things. But when we swung back around for a last look at the animals before heading out a few minutes later, there were two other sales people moving the tarantula from one tank to another. This was actually the first chance I’d gotten to really see him (as he’d been hidden in a hide box before) and he turned out to be a rather pretty spider. And while the sales girls didn’t take a chance of getting bitten and moved him by urging him into box with the help of a stick, he didn’t jump up and try to bite them as I had been led to believe he might. Which got me to thinking that maybe he wasn’t all that bad.
My partner and I left the store and wandered on to another, but I couldn’t get my mind off the Starburst tarantula. It isn’t often I get to see species besides Guyana Pinktoes and Chilean Rosehairs in my neck of the woods, and I wanted to expand my small collection. So when we left the second store we headed straight back to the pet store and I bought the spider. When we got home a short while later I went directly online to find out what kind of care my Starburst Baboon (now named Quaid (from “Total Recall”) as I name all of my spiders after SciFi characters) would need. The problem, as I soon discovered, was that there was more than one kind of Starburst Baboon tarantula. And while both were known to be somewhat aggressive, one was also known to be rather shy while the other was nicknamed “the orange bitey thing” among tarantula enthusiasts. They had not given me the scientific name for my new spider when I bought him, so I couldn’t determine that way which kind he might be. And he didn’t look much like any of the pictures I could find. But later that night he came out of hiding for a while and I got a close look at his markings. It looked like I had bought a “orange bitey thing.”
This isn’t the end of the world, of course. My partner and I know how to be careful. I don’t make a habit of handling my tarantulas anyway, so it isn’t like I’ll be missing out on anything. And really the literature I read made it sound like Starburst Baboon tarantulas only bite when they are feeling harassed and threatened. I have no intention of harassing or threatening my spiders. So it will be okay that I fell into ownership of a tarantula that is a bit out of my experience level. But next time I will be looking up details on something I’m not sure about BEFORE I buy it and bring it home. 
