5.10.2005

GRARGH what IS it with the dying!?

Just after I finished making that post about the spiders, I cuise over to check on them, and the mouse. The mouse isn't a pet, the mouse is food for Grim, my ball python. We buy a nice rodent, whenever we go to the Snake Pit (because he has good, quality mice, and we get there maybe twice a month) powerfeed the little bugger, and when Grim gets hungry, he's got a nice, fattened, happy, nutritionally complete mousie waiting for him. We always have a mouse in a tank, waiting. Call it a temporary pet, I guess. Makes me heartless to be able to hang on to something for 2 weeks or more, then feed it to my snake, but, it's the nature of things.

Got this mouse, last week.

It's dead.

What. The. Fuck. Fed, watered, normal tank, lots of cottony fluff to hide in. Same like all the rest of the mice I've housed till "feeding time" I've kept some, a month or more. This one just, died.

I'm getting rather frustrated.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aren't the mice "guaranteed" for a week or so?

Heck, hamsters and gerbils are guaranteed for a month a places like PetSmart and those get handled by children...

Oh, and just for my morbid curiosity, how much do spiders cost. Not that I'm planning on getting one any time soon (We have enough black widows outside, which I will give you are quite cool looking in their own right) but just because I am nosey like that...

Lili said...

These are cheapy feeder mice, it cost a buck. They're designed for buying, taking home, throwing in the tank, and byebye... But, yeah, most *pets* are guaranteed.

Now, on to the price of spiders. I've seen them as cheap as $8, on up to $475. There are hundreds of species that can be kept as pets, and the more common, less interesting, easier to breed in captivity types are cheaper. They go on up in price, due to ornamentality, difficulty in keeping (and breeding) rarity, etc.

The ones I'm buying are cheapies. I'm getting them super tiny, so they'er both under $15. Shipping is what kills ya. Whether you get one spider, or ten, it's a flat $25 for guaranteed live arrival shipping. The guy I order from is free with the freebies, too. So, I ordered two, and I'll likely get four, when they come tomorrow.

Lili said...

Oh, and you should start capturing those black widows, and breeding them. There's quite a market in the true-spider hobby (not tarantualas, like I like) for black widows, from all over. I know a guy who just spent a mint on a German black widow.

Anonymous said...

LOL - No capturing and breeding gonna happen here. I'd probably kill more of the ones I find if their webs weren't so distinctive and easy to spot (and keep the kids away from)