At risk of revealing myself to be the insane person that I actually am, I’m having a bit of an ethical dilemma:
Should I keep feeding Spencer?
Spencer is the jumping spider in this video. He took a liking to my workshop in the middle of the summer, roaming around, looking for bugs, I would constantly see him hanging out when I was working on stuff and he started to seem like a little buddy.
Fast forward to the winter time I hadn’t seen Spencer for quite a while, and then one day I saw him emaciated, slowly crawling across the floor. Obviously, he hasn’t been finding much to eat lately. So I headed outside and looked for some bugs and was surprised at how hard it was to find them. I guess I’ve never gone looking for bugs in the winter before.
Most of what I could find were tiny centipedes and beetles which he wasn’t interested in, but then I found a little spider and brought it in. Spencer immediately perked up, took a moment to dial-in distance and trajectory, and then took it down like a tiny missile. (jumping about five times farther than you see in this video).
Since then, the weirdest thing has happened. Every few weeks when I’m working on my computer, Spencer will show up next to me on the couch. This has to be coincidence but it seems like he’s asking for food. So I’ve been going out in the yard like a totally crazy person flipping over stumps and flower pots and bringing him more little spiders which is all I can find that he will eat.
but now I’m starting to feel like I’m committing a tiny ethical crime because at this rate, I would’ve killed about 15 spiders by the end of the winter to keep my little buddy alive.
What do you think? Should I let Spencer starve or should I keep supporting his cannibalistic behavior? Also, if you’re some kind of spider scientist, feel free to let me know if this isn’t a male spider.
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