Students in Dr. June Olds' Exotic Pet Medicine class served as temporary caretakers for the tarantula last month.
During the 30-day challenge, Iowa State Veterinary Medicine students were responsible for naming tarantulas, feeding small cockroaches, and generally observing tarantula behavior.
Friends and classmates Rachel Ferguson and Molly Eiley named their tarantulas Nandor and Laszlo, inspired by the FX show “What We Do in the Shadows.”
Ms Ferguson admitted she was “really scared” of spiders and had not told her husband she was bringing one home.
“So he was pretty surprised by it all,” she said.
However, he became an avid spider sitter. He worked from his home during the day while Rachel was at school, so he left a box of Nandore's on his desk.
“He would send me pictures of what he was doing and we really liked him,” Ferguson said.
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Laszlo and his ping pong ball: Is it play or battle?
Lyman Gardens is well known for its butterfly house, but less is known for its tarantulas.
Lyman loaned 33 of the 100 tarantulas to Iowa State University's exotic pet medicine class in February, and the students returned the tarantulas on Wednesday, March 6.
Ferguson and Iley each had a red round object in their tarantula homes. Fishing floats and red ping pong balls stimulated the spiders. One of Mr. Iley's videos shows Laszlo getting on top of a ball and hitting it, then rolling to the side.
“He was riding it and scratching it with his fangs. He was actually touching it,” Iley said.
Ferguson also gave Nandor a tube from a toilet paper roll, which Nandor crawled into and hid.
“I got excited when he started playing with the ball and climbing on the toilet paper roll. It was a very exciting day,” she said. “It's scary, but it's kind of cute. It looks like a spider playing with a ball!”
Ferguson says she's learned that spiders can get irritated when they stick their legs out at you.
This is the tarantula version of a human with his hand on his face.
“He was cocky at times,” Ferguson said.
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busy nocturnal creatures
Iley said her tarantula became quiet and active at night, burrowing into the substrate at the bottom of the cage.
Laszlo was sitting at an end table in the living room so Irie could watch him while he studied.
“My cats loved watching him and he was so cute,” she said.
The students fed the tarantulas small live cockroaches and gave them water.
Although Eilee's tarantula didn't eat the cockroach, the cockroach survived with him in the tote, leading to jokes about Laszlo having a pet of his own.
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class tarantulas were not intended for human handling
During the month-long mission, each tarantula was kept in a clear plastic tote bag.
Two of the tarantula species in Rayman Garden's collection are not suitable for human handling.
“Their fur is very irritating to humans, so they throw it up as a defense,” Olds says. “If you put your hand in the cage, they'll kick you and throw your hair around. These are more aggressive species.”
This spider is different from the Chilean rose tarantula, which is kept as an exotic pet and is often handled by humans. The veterinarian class tarantulas were either Brazilian salmon or white knee species. Each leg of the white knee has a white stripe.
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“Cute” pets
“The white-knee tarantula is beautiful,” said Gabriela Luke, who built a home for the tarantula in a terrarium and named it Margaret.
The Iowa State University students did not know the sex of their assigned spider, but many assigned pronouns and names to their temporary pets.
“Sometimes I would go to school and come home and find that she had put up a huge spider's web,” Luke said. “Then she made a ball out of it.”
Luke learned that tarantulas sometimes spin matted nests before molting, but Margaret did not molt under Luke's care.
“It was a great opportunity to learn from it and have it for a month and see how to take care of it,” Luke said. “It’s a great opportunity for veterinary students to learn about new species in case they emerge in the future.”
Luke's parents, Larry and Teresa Ford, are educators in the Ballard School District. Ballard College graduates are no strangers to interacting with exotic animals.
“My father is a science teacher, so he would have geckos, tarantulas, frogs, all sorts of things in his classroom for his students to learn about,” she said. “So, I didn't feel any discomfort towards tarantulas, and I knew a little bit about them, but after seeing one here on her kitchen table for a month, I’m getting more used to it.”
Illegal trade in wild tarantulas is a problem
Olds said the assignment teaches students about keeping invertebrates as pets and knowing that these animals may someday require veterinary care.
“We also talk about animals that are trafficked from the wild for the pet trade,” she said. “…When we talk about the ethics of keeping these animals as pets, we need to think about where they come from.”
Law enforcement has seized all of Lyman Gardens' tarantulas in an illegal trafficking case.
Nathan Brockman, director of entomology at Lyman Gardens, said he tries to educate residents on how to properly and legally obtain tarantulas.
“It's very difficult to know if a tarantula is wild-caught or if it's a captive-bred tarantula,” he says. “What we want to leverage in the hobby industry is captive breeding. People (breed) them in captivity, and then that animal becomes something that someone keeps as a pet.”
Ames Tribune reporter Ronna Faaborg can be reached at rlawless@gannett.com.
