SPIDERS, CALGARY

My late wife, Marguerite, and I have literally spent decades selling tarantulas to all sorts of people of all ages and from all walks of life. We've massaged and reworked the care suggestions in these webpages and The Tarantula Keeper's Guide over and over again to make them just about as bullet proof as they can get for novices, to get the novice and their newfound little buddy past the steep, risky part of the learning curve as simply, quickly and safely as possible.

The PROBLEM is that tarantulas are so unconventional, so outright bizarre in so many ways that if you try "doing your own thing" at the outset, you stand an even chance of harming your pet or even killing it instead!

The PLAN is that you follow these instructions carefully for now, not experimenting with anything new until you learn how to care for these amazing creatures.

But make no mistake! Even experienced aficionados can occasionally use a little review.

However, these instructions are not necessarily the only ones that will work, and maybe not even the best ones available. The hobby is still new and very much in a state of development. We're still discovering new things about tarantulas and inventing new techniques for their care almost daily.

After you've had one or more tarantulas for a year or better, and you've done all your homework, you can start experimenting with the tricks and techniques of other enthusiasts. Just don't do that yet. FIRST, learn the basics of tarantula care. THEN start experimenting on your own.

But remember, when something goes horribly wrong often the best plan is to go back to the bare bones basics and start over again

Lastly, when baking a cake you can adopt either of two strategies. You can either follow the recipe blindly, hoping that it'll all turn out okay in the end; or you can learn why a cake does what it does (e.g., rises or falls) as it bakes, and how to control it.

In these webpages as well as The Tarantula Keeper's Guide the goal is not simply to blindly give you a recipe, but to teach you how tarantulas work and why we do what we do with them. Learn this technique! It'll save you a lot of fallen cakes, and more than a few dead tarantulas!

"I can only hope that each of you can learn to enjoy your little 8-legged marvels even one-tenth as much as Marguerite and I have."

Stan Schultz