LET’S START WITH INTRODUCTIONS, SHALL WE?

 

Jessica De Oliveira is a grade 12 arts and culture student who is also the Fierce Team’s design head. She loves spiders, bees and snakes but admits she is deadly afraid of flies (pteronarcophobia). And this fear of flies spawned her fondness for arachnology (the study of arachnids) which then led to herpetology (the study of reptiles). She began keeping more spiders in her room rather than transferring them outside. “I figure that they’d eat the flies and mosquitoes and all those weird things I hate” she stated. Ever since she was younger she has adored animals. “I dug in the dirt, played with worms, held beetles, caught caterpillars... to me it was fun and interesting. I used to raise caterpillars into moths.” Once the younger version of Jessica watched how these creatures behaved, how they moved, ate, and spun webs, she realized that these eight-legged creatures posed no threat to humans at all, and in reality, were “pretty cool guys.” 

 

 In October of 2012, while she was in Grade 10, she purchased her first tarantula, with the permission of her mom, who thought it would die within a month. Little did her mother know, they could live around 10-20 years. Almost three years later,  with a series of ups and downs, she currently has a total of 13 tarantulas, 4 scorpions, a gecko (she said, “He’s adorable I love him!”), 3 ball pythons,  a king snake, and a praying mantis, as well as two dozen baby spiders that she has been selling. 

 

We asked her if her family shared her love for her pets and she stated, “My family hasn’t been supportive except for my dad’s side. But, I showed them to my cousins and let them hold onto my most docile tarantula, one of my scorpions and my snakes. One of my main goals is to educate others, especially children, on how awesome these creatures can be if you just give them a chance. They loved it.”

 

THE COMMUNITY AND THE HOBBY

 

To our surprise she told us there was an enormous community dedicated to this hobby and to educating others about it. She told us how she learned about her pets: “Research online, so it’s self-taught. I also ask others: there are groups on Facebook, there’s message boards and most breeders are more than happy to answer questions.” We wanted to test her knowledge so we asked her if she knew how to determine the sex of her tarantulas. “You will get a molt (when they shed their skin). Tarantulas have book lungs. In a molt you have to look in between the top two book lungs and look for spermathecae, which looks like two little antennaes or a flap sticking out of the skin. If you see them it’s a female, if there are none it’s a male.” 

 

She further surprised us when she told us she sold spiders all across Canada. How many people can you name who do that for a hobby? We asked her how she started breeding and she said, “My tarantula had his final molt so he grew his hooks and paldipaps. Since I knew his life span after this was going to be 2 years I put him to use. I sent my male off to a breeding loan to Alberta and he did get eaten, but he did produce an egg sac with a female. I got 60 spiderlings out of 400. A few died, I kept a few and I sold a few.” She plans on breeding more herself so she can have full profits and gain experience. She also aspires to become a reputable reptile and arachnid breeder in Canada.  

 

We were clueless as to how this shipping process went and she kindly explained to us: “I post an ad on Kijiji and say I’m selling this kind of spider for this much, at this place. There are certain factors that determine the price of a tarantula such as species, gender, size, and availability. I can ship to anywhere in Canada as long as the temperatures are suitable. If it is a spiderling you put them into a cut straw that has tissue blocking both sides. If it’s larger you put them into a deli cup lined with tissue. You then put this into a box that should be insulated, full of packing stuff and a heat pack. Tape the box and you’re good to go.” 

 

A LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

 

With as many pets as she owns it made us wonder how many had passed away under her ownership and supervision. “I’ve had incidents with bad spiderlings (what you call baby tarantulas or spiders). I’ve bought some that came with mites and I didn’t maintain humidity sometimes. I’ve also had one run away but don’t worry, it was only a baby and it probably died in a matter of 2 hours. I’ve also goofed up sometimes but I’ve learned from my mistakes.”

 

We were very entranced with her words but couldn’t help but be nervous and quite curious. We asked her if she ever got bit by one of her pets and she smiled, “Well I got bit by my snakes and by my gecko. The rat dropped from my hands when I was going to feed him and I picked it not knowing he was going to strike. The second time was with my other snake. I forgot my hand smelled like rat when I picked him up and he was hungry so he bit me. Honestly, I had worse from a kitten. With my gecko, I was holding a cricket with my hands because I lost my tongs when I was feeding him and he got a little too excited and he bit me. Wasn’t bad at all.” 

 

Before we ended the interview we asked Jessica if she wanted to say anything else. She said, “Remember kids, next time you see a critter that might look a little spooky, try viewing it from another angle, you’ll see how awesomely beautiful they can be.”