Tangled Up In Blog

Last night I received a comment on one of my previous posts, "Casa de Chester," from Jessie. Just to clarify, Chester is our frog, the one in the pictures getting fed. Chester is not, as my beloved high school pet ChiChi was, a tarantula. I have to clear something up with this story as well...because ChiChi did not die from a fall...she was poisoned!!!

I got ChiChi shortly after I got my drivers license. I desperately wanted a pet at that time. Cats were not allowed because my family had been devastated by the loss of our beloved cross-eyed cat Steve four years earlier. Any rodents or snakes were also out since my mom is terrified of both. So I happened to stop by the pet store in New Iberia one day and there she was...a beautiful Chilean rose-haired tarantula. (see above) I think Meyer was with me at the time, but I'm not sure. Anyway, ChiChi ate only live crickets which had to be purchased at the pet store. This was sort of chore but she was really cool so I didn't mind. I'm sure my mom remembers this differently. She molted once which was really neat, and she once laid an egg sack. We worried for a week or so that our house was going to be inundated with hundreds of baby tarantulas but probably due to the lack of a male tarantula, that never happened. Unfortunately, after I had ChiChi for a couple of years, my family went on vacation. For some reason, I asked Andy's family to take care of ChiChi while we were out of town. Upon our return, ChiChi was dead.

There was no necroscopy so I can't be sure of her exact cause of death. The average life span is over 15 years so natural causes can definitely be ruled out. I found out that instead of going to a pet store or bait shop to get crickets, Andy's mom had been catching crickets in their backyard and feeding them to ChiChi. I can only conclude that ChiChi was either fed a species of cricket to which she was allergic, or that the pesticides and chemicals in the wild crickets killed her! Or maybe, the truth is now being revealed....since Jessie heard a story that involved ChiChi dying from a small fall, maybe someone in Andy's family dropped her, confessed the story to Jessie's source, and I am only finding out the truth just now!

Hm...if anyone knows anything more about this..please leave your information in the comments.