Goldilocks...

 So, as you know, we were recently thrilled to be able to watch our special pet,Rosalynn, molt.  A sight that few people get a glimpse of.  Unfortunately, shortly following her molt, we discovered that she is a he.  This may not seem a big deal.  But in the spider world, it is huge.  This means that HE will only live an average of 2-3 years.  Now that he is mature, it is unlikely that he will molt again before dying.  As you can imagine, this really upset my boys (and me).  We have really grown attached to Rosalynn. (name remains unchanged)

 So, enter Goldilocks.  I asked one of my employees, who happens to be a spider expert, to help us find a female.  She went to a reptile show and picked up Goldilocks for us.  Goldilocks is a choco gold knee.  She is Really Big!  Females live an average of 15-20 years and sometimes longer in captivity!  I wanted a spider we could handle and use for demonstrations, so she is also nice and fairly calm.  She is a great eater.  I gave her at least a dozen crickets the other night and by morning they were all gone!  Rosalynn has lost all interest in food, so it was quite a treat to see Goldilocks really get into eating:)
 I am not sure if you can tell, but her legspan is easily larger than my hand.  She is also much heavier than Rosalynn.  That makes sense now that we know Rosalynn is a boy.  Girls are usually heavier bodied where boys stay slimmer because all they can think about is finding a girlfriend... food is an afterthought.
The boys were so excited to get Goldilocks home.  They spent the afternoon carefully decorating her new terrarium and eagerly awaiting her arrival.  You can see in the bottom picture how they made her home look very pretty with lots of different textures and colors.  They are very good spider caretakers.  She even has a custom built hidey box with stickers and scrapbook paper to make it lovely:)  Stickers on the outside of the terrarium complete the look.  I think they did a wonderful job:)