I'm happy he's healing up so well. I'm also impressed at how quickly they get into changing his lifestyle to include some cardiovascular work. Are we all listening? Diet is good, but the work is best.
The most important thing I've learnt about aerobic exercise is this. You need to work hard enough that you can't sing, but not so hard that you can't carry on a conversation. Now, away with you and jot that down on your collective foreheads backwards of course so you can be reminded of it every time you look in a mirror.
Late last fall my Lasiodora parahybana - Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater tarantula lost a couple of legs in a molt. After a quick Internet search I discovered that this isn't such a rare event in the lives of tarantulas and she'd likely regrow legs progressively in successive molts. Although the process of molting takes a huge toll on these critters, it wasn't more than a few days after the molt that she was able to function seemingly without impediment and Saturday night she molted again.
Way cool! Two new legs sprouted where there were only stumps before. She lay down a matt of webbing on Satuday so I knew a molt was imminent. I took that opportunity to have a really close look at her so I could hopefully better appreciate the changes a molt would bring to her. She didn't grow much, but the colours are much enhanced and how about those legs? < g > Heaven only knows where she put them, but obviously inside her body cavity somewhere. The two new legs aren't fully up to the high quality of the other six, but I bet next time they are a lot closer to prefect. What a trick to be able to gas the lame ones and start again.
This next one should be posted to the found_objects@lj group here. I wish I would have recognised what was going on earlier in the process. The dogs finally caught up with a ground squirrel they had been hounding for weeks and it was dead as a door nail out beside the outhouse. Everyone has one of those right? :P
The first day I noticed the head was beneath ground level I stopped and had a close look at the dirt to see who or what was trying to pull a fast one on me. I could make no good observations to support any above ground interferance, but it never occured to me that the tug was coming from below at that point. I thought for sure Manon had spent hours configuring the scene to suggest a mystery. She's the queen of the practical joke. The next day it was much farther along being swallowed down a hole, but again there was no suggestion as to who or what was playing with my brain.
OK, so I'm slow! On day three I got the camera. It must have been a pocket gopher. Nasty buggers in a trap noted for the brave again.
How weird is this?
My foot troubles remain and it looks like I won't get in to have my inserts fit to my shoes this week. My fitness level is dropping off rapidly as would be expected. So many buttons, so little time.
