> Alexia Arrives
date: 02/09/2025
Dutch bought me Alexia for my birthday! I already love her... We got her at a local speciality pet shop that had a lot of arizona blondes to choose from. Alexia was the biggest female they had. I've heard the bigger the T is, the hardier they are and I didn't want to take any chances. I also just wanted to get her out of there, something tells me she's been there the longest v_v... she's so beautiful! We also got her a nice sized enclosure but I'm fairly certain the guy oversold me lol. whatever, it just means I won't have to rehouse her for a very long time. She's named after Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil Code: Veronica. Alexia is a blonde bug lady... Alexia is a blonde spider... it just makes sense.
When we got home I immediately put her enclosure together. i think I'm gonna have to buy more substrate for her but she's dormant for the "winter" so, I'll worry about all that when she comes back out. She was very good about being rehoused! She didn't kick any hair at me or anything. I think that's a really good sign... part of the reason I picked this genus is because they're supposed to be quite docile and gentle. I left her be after the rehousing, I know she was stressed. She started exploring later in the day and eventually found the burrow I had started for her. She start excavating pretty quickly after that. It was cool to watch her move dirt around in her chelicerae!
She sealed her burrow later that evening, while we were asleep. At first I was stressed about it; she hasn't eaten once in my care and I had no idea when the pet store I'd bought her from fed her last. It didn't look like she was due for a molt, so I set to googling and watching a ton of videos and eventually discovered that younger A. Chalchodes went into a sort of dormant state during winter. I'd been researching this genus for a while and had somehow completely missed this fact. I was able to see her at the bottom of her enclosure and ensure she was alive and well. According to the sources I'd read, I can expect to see her sometime in mid to late April. I expect she will be hungry and I plan on getting her some horn worms to help her get some of her hydration back and from then on I plan to switch between crickets and super worms.
I plan on using this as a means to track Alexia's feeding, molting, rehousing, and everything I can think of!
