Mang Yeh was the name my friend Jon gave to my pet Tarantula. One of the best pets I ever had. A little something about my tarantula: It is one of the most aggressive of the tarantula species. Because of its orange color it is known as the Orange Baboon. It is also known as the Usumbara Baboon or its scientific name Pterinochilus Pt. Unlike some tarantulas the Usumbara Baboon is the most aggressive. Mess with it and it will go into the attack stance and ready to kick your ass. The bite is poisonous but not poisonous enough to kill a grown up. If it bit a kid he might die though. A grown up will probably get high fever or something.
The hair on the tarantula can best be described as fiber glass. One of the defensive methods of the tarantula is brushing its legs against its body to release its hair which then irritates the skin and eyes. I don’t know what happens if it touches your eyes, you’ll probably go blind or something. The life span for a tarantula is about 3 to 4 years. Naturally the female tarantula is larger than the male. I still remember the day when I went to buy my Mang Yeh. It was an exotic pet shop which had no license so I can’t really mention where it is. There were about 10 containers with tarantulas in them. It didn’t take me long to pick Mang Yeh. The shop owner had just dumped in 2 crickets in each container, Mang Yeh was up and in action. Going after the crickets like a hunter, I didn’t have to think twice who I wanted as a pet out of the 10. A video I found YouTube:
The first time I brought it back home it was only 2 and a half inches big. Being the killer that it was I couldn’t hold it on my hands. It had fangs about half a centimeter. I assume it would hurt a lot if I got bitten. So I used a pen to play with it. Then later I used the pen to write. You can guess what happened next. The hair made my fingers itchy and I scratched my other parts of the body, it spread to everywhere.
On my 21st birthday I showed SleepyAngel my pet and she was so terrified she stood like 3 meters away from the little aquarium that I kept Mang Yeh in. By now Mang Yeh was used to be opening the lid to show her to my friends. She would come out of the little tiub that she used for her home and put up an "I would kick your ass" stance and pose for the camera. She would never run or jump out. The conversation:
SleepyAngel: I’ll look from here
Fawked: come closer! take a closer look
SleepyAngel: I’m fine here man… really, I’m fine
Fawked: COME HERE GODDAMN IT!
SleepyAngel: what are you doing, don’t take the lid off… DONT!
Fawked: fine, I’ll bring it over to you then
SleepyAngel: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!
Fawked: wahahahha
Most memorable incident:
One day I woke up late in the afternoon for lunch (those were the days when I could wake up at 2 for lunch then go back to bed). I walked over to Mang Yeh to check on her and… the lid was open… Oh crap. I had a poisonous tarantula loose in my room. By now she was full size about 5 inches and fangs at least over 1 centimeter. I don’t know how poisonous she is but she would pack a real painful bite. There was no way she could escape from my room because she was too big to crawl under the closed doors and my windows were closed shut. My room was like a jungle, she could be anywhere… she could suddenly jump from my cupboard onto my face and bite me in the eyeballs. It was a good thing that Mang Yeh wasn’t much of an explorer.
She just came out of the aquarium and made a little nest behind one of my speakers. Its really tough looking after tarantulas. You cannot man handle them like how you do most pets. Just by touching its hair could irritate the skin. Tarantulas get easily sick if you leave un-eaten carcasses of crickets or whatever you feed them with in the same container. Like all living creatures tarantulas take a shit occasionally, they look like raisins so you have to clean them too. Tarantulas shed their skin every once in a while, it is during this time they are at its weakest. During this time its fangs would be white in color and very soft so it won’t be able to bite its enemies. My tarantulas aquarium was attacked by ants 3 times. Ants could kill your tarantula. They are small and they have numbers. Ant attacks are the most troublesome to deal with. You have to get the tarantula out, throw the sand away and getting the tarantula back in the aquarium. I do this barehanded but I do not recommend you do so, use 2 gloves, very very thick gloves and a paint brush (those used by Artists). Use the brush to slowly coax the tarantula in or out of containers. Using sharp objects might accidently puncture the sack (backside of the tarantula) which is the weakest part of their body.
If a tarantula loses its leg(s) they will grow back eventually. Sometimes during skin shedding, there might be complications. Sometimes the skin will not shed properly especially near the legs. This is how you administer minor surgery to your tarantula:
Throw it in the freezer, freeze the tarantula up bit. You have to keep disturbing it once in a while so it doesn’t die. Just make it cold enough till its movement is slowed. Then apply minor surgery to remove the shed skin. Tarantulas are not advised for kids below 18 or people that don’t know how to masturbate. If you can’t handle your own python how can you handle a poisonous spider?
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