A Blue Tarantula!

While I was in grad school, I was gifted a baby blue tarantula by a friend, an

Avicularia versicolor. I named him Aragog and I raised him to adulthood. The spiderlings of this species are a brilliant blue, and the adult final molt color is a black, purple, pink and green!

If you made it through all those photos, maybe you appreciated the beautiful spider. If you are horrified, I apologize. In truth, I am somewhere in between these two views. It is my hand the tarantula is crawling on in the end, but I was rather nervous to hold him. Tarantulas are actually rather fragile and I was afraid of getting startled and dropping him. But we both made it through the encounter unscathed. I'm glad I got to witness the life of such a beautiful creature, but I'm not sure I will again!