Beware topical flea and tick meds if you want to have a pet spider.

This is probably one of the most important posts about care information I will ever share in reference to pet spiders.

So to anyone who is considering getting a spider, or any other invertebrate as a pet, and you have other pets in the house, that you treat for fleas and ticks, you need to look into what kind of medicine you use. If you are treating them with a topical flea and tick medicine, you need to switch them over to something oral instead, and then wait a few months, before you get a spider as a pet. Fipronil poisoning is probably the worst, most heartbreaking thing to watch your spider experience. And it is fatal. And it isn’t something that happens quickly. It can sometimes be something that can take a few weeks. The poison attacks the spider neurologically, and causes twitching, flopping around and turning over, clenching of muscles, spasms, seizures….

This is something I experienced a few years ago, where I lost almost every spider I had. Some of my early followers may remember. Some of you even helped with my gofundme to work with a zoo pathologist to figure out what made them all sick. Once I stopped the treatments on my dogs, it never happened again.

Unfortunately about two weeks ago I pet a dog at a friends house, who recently had the meds applied, earlier that week. The dog was adorable and deserved hugs for being adorable, and then, because I was not thinking, I did not wash my hands as we went and handled spiders.

The results are extremely depressing. 😞

My friend and I both lost all the spiders we handled that day. Some of them passed within 24 hours, and the others over the next 2 weeks of symptoms getting worse, then getting better, then getting worse again.

The rest of the spiders are fine, having experienced this before I’m grateful to at least have an answer to what happened, and at least share it with people so they know what not to do.

And I really don’t want to even have to post about it because I hate having to share such a dumb mistake. And I’m not gonna post the videos of the spiders twitching around or anything just don’t use topical flea meds. Frontline sucks. 😞