#27 - JULY IS HERE - LET'S START IT RANTING

July 1st, already? So what did y'all do with that leap second in your longest day in three years yesterday? Hope you didn't waste it on Faffbook ...

I know I just did a rant on Faffbook Fuckery, and you'd think I'd be immune to all the fuckery happening by now, but every time I make the mistake of checking my News Feed I am reminded that people are idiots and the Internet is melting my brain.

Yesterday Kelly Swift posted a photo of an Avicularia versicolor female he stumbled upon during a visit to Petco. It was 1/2 off and the regular price was only $35. A 3" or so female for $17.50. I would have been happy paying full price. But the thing that caught my eye was that some imbecile named Skip Bates tried to correct Swifty that it was actually A. avicularia. "Your specimen is a Guyana Pinktoe "Avicularia avicularia" and not Antilles Pinktoe which is A versicolor". This is the kind of seemingly authoritative yet completely ignorant post that you see on FB every day. The biggest joke is that this twat is actually trying to correct Swifty. As if he knows more about tarantulas than one of the legends of our hobby. Now I've seen it all. The problem isn't Mr. Bates' public stupidity; the problem is that some other misguided at best, completely ignorant at worst, newbie is going to see a post like this, which is phrased very confidently, and regurgitate it elsewhere. This is why misinformation is the plague of our hobby. The asinine Bates post was followed up by somebody named Justin Fae posting "Actually the Avicularia genus is pretty screwed up so it could be a number of different things". The first part of this statement is true, but the second half is just as ignorant. Look at the photo! If you don't know that the tarantula in the image is A. versicolor you should keep your hands off your damn keyboard. You obviously have no personal knowledge about the state of Avicularia taxonomy. Fae is just vomiting something he's read. It couldn't be a number of different things. It is versicolor, although that species will eventually be transferred from Avicularia. But I guarantee you that Bates and Fae have no fucking clue why. Do you? Here's a trivia question for you: In what regard is A. versicolor different than every other spider currently classified as Avicularia? The reason is why it will eventually be in its own genus (as per Fukushima). Answer at end. Swifty was typically very polite in his response to Bates. He wrote: "Hey Skip, your wrong, it's an A versicolor". Now despite my old friend Kelly making the common error of writing "your" when he should have wrote "you're" - an astonishingly common error and something that drives my OCD into overdrive - he was very kind. I wouldn't have been so nice. But you probably know that by now. Finally humor was interjected when Anastasia wrote: "Damn it, I don't think it's Avic or any kind of pink toe at all, it don't have pink toez, maybe camel toe?" Now that's funny and wraps up the comments with a bow. But questioning Swifty's identification?!? I am still flabbergasted and I see moronic comments like those of Bates every day, just like you do if you're paying attention and have the knowledge to distinguish bullshit from truth. The danger is that when it seems to be written with so much confidence it comes off with an air of authority that a newbie will regard as knowledge and will later spew out his or herself in the dangerous "telephone game". (See Blog #3 - INFORMATION IS NOT KNOWLEDGE. This is one of the most important blog entries I have written.)

OK, enough Faffbook for now. My contempt will return again and again. Let me rant about something else. But first let me review the month of June. I resurrected KISS MY BIG HAIRY SPIDER on June 3 and made 32 blog entries in the 27 days of June that followed. There were 26 numbered posts, the extra 5 are due to a few being numbered as part "B" when posted the same day or related to original post. I don't know if I'll be able to maintain that output in July unless you submit me topics for either rants or for educational posts. I definitely have some "how to" educational stuff coming as I will always try to have a balance. My primary goal is to educate. My secondary goal is to call out the asshats.

In my recent SPIDERSHOPPE related posts I mentioned that there are only six dealers I would recommend and that I wouldn't name them. I still won't. Although I promise to pull no punches, I also will not play favorites among a community that I am heavily involved in. I got to thinking about this last night and thought that perhaps I would name my recommendations, but in the process I realized that there aren't even six actual dealers that I would endorse. By actual dealers I mean people with a strong web presence and website, who are selling as primary source of income and who have been around selling for a minimum of 5 years. I can't name 6. That's sad perhaps, but it also shows how poor the American hobby is. So I guess Blog #28 (I'm very busy the next couple of days so it might not be until the weekend) will be about the American hobby and exactly why the European tarantula hobby is so much stronger. But back to this arbitrary 6. I can't come up with them. Like I said, a professional or semi-professional business with website and sales being a primary source of income are the criteria. Therefore, this doesn't include some of the hobbyist breeders that I recommend like Tom Patterson, Chad Campbell, Jason Newland, etc. These are some of the people I recommend you support. But actual dealers I am going to avoid endorsing at this point. So let's go back to rant and name some that I do not endorse. Let's call out some sellers that you should not support. These will be my personal opinions and anything I accuse them of is my impression alone and all acts are alleged. I am not slandering anyone. They are welcome to rebut my post in the comments below. I will ignore them if they contact me otherwise. I am just expressing why I personally would not buy from them. I am expressing my opinions alone and giving you my recommendations based on 33 years as a professional seller of arachnids. You can make your own judgement.

1. Jamie's Tarantulas - She's been around for awhile and I'm actually surprised she's still out there. I don't see any lists or advertisements when I poke around the Intrawebs. I dealt with her once to obtain Avicularia diversipes years ago. I believe she was the first or among the first to breed. Typically I support people who are actually breeding spiders, but allegedly she ships most orders ILLEGALLY via the postal service. Will someone please confirm this in the comments. I see on her site that she does offer FedEx Overnight, but she charges $65 so I highly doubt many orders are shipped this way. It's tough enough to get cheap tarantula customers to pay $40-45 for the only proper way to ship. But since she also offers a $17 1-3 day service she is doing two things that are, IMO, unacceptable. She's using the USPS (ILLEGAL) and risking lives by being willing to have a living thing in transit for 3 days. DO NOT SUPPORT!

2. Stamp's Tarantulas - Who the hell is this guy? What has he bred? Who heard of him before a year or two. He's a complete newbie. He has allegedly admitted to brown boxing and allegedly brown boxing CITES protected Brachypelma at that. His defense was (according to my sources) that he was new and didn't know any better. Is this the kind of person you want to buy spiders from? His Faffbook page shows that he is actually a salesman for some industrial supply company. He's started some hobby business and wants to play among the real animal people. He's my age and has a family. He's just playing tarantula dealer. The good thing is that I guarantee he won't last another year. Don't help him extend it by one day. DO NOT SUPPORT!

3. R2 Exotics - I've heard nothing good about this reptile guy who is dabbling in spiders. Rumor has him buying imports via NERD, a huge reptile breeder who also has recently decided to dabble in spiders. Don't buy from reptile dealers! Buy from people who have extensive arachnid knowledge and are accomplished arachnid breeders, not reptile people moving living things like they are widgets. R2 is Richard Roman, but it appears that Rob Penny is his silent partner. Penny is the guy who struck up some exclusive agreement with Nicolai Pedersen to sell the overrated, IMO, and absurdly expensive Thrigmopoeus psychedelicus in the US. Rumor has it that Roman tries to distance himself from Penny because the latter has a terrible reputation in reptile circles. Go to Fauna Classifieds Board of Inquiry and do your own research. I would avoid these two like the plague. I am truly disappointed that a personal friend of mine just gave them a considerable amount of money. Don't let your desire to obtain a species on your wish list allow you to contribute to the success of people who taint our hobby and have a long record of poor business practices. Want to get an idea of the way these guys work? Penny knows I have hirschii females and need a male or three. He allegedly has a male, but told a friend of mine that the price of this male is dependent on how many females I have. He's not interested in supporting US captive breeding and, specifically, contributing to the captive reproduction of a rare species. He's larcenous, he's greedy. He thinks I am going to give him a female. Guess what Penny? I'll never give you a penny and I'll definitely never give you a spider. You haven't a fucking clue and your reputation speaks for itself.

4. Vixvy - See Blog #15. If you're an American and have this clown ship to your doorstep you are a criminal.

5. Inland Sea - I met Mike Carlton at reptile shows in Virginia and North Carolina years ago and my former boss at Tarantulas.com/Northwest Zoological Supply has dealt with him for years. He's a good guy. However, he had some kind of problem with FedEx and has been banned from receiving or shipping with them. So now he is ILLEGALLY shipping via the postal service. Don't buy from anyone who ships USPS!

I'm going to leave this list at 5 for now as the Penny situation has me wanting to rant about something else ... I'm sure I'll call out some others by name again soon. I may actually name some recommendations at the end just to balance this blog post. It will just be very tricky so I don't alienate anyone I don't want to (as you know, I gleefully alienate those I haven't a fuck to give about).

I've known Nico Pedersen for awhile. Not well, just through some correspondence. We first met in person at a British Tarantula Society Exhibition somewhere in between 2006-2008. He was with Soren Rafn, who I have a lot of respect for, and Thomas Froik who has become great friends with Penny. All three of these guys (except Penny) are Danish. Nicolai may be best known for having Poecilotheria pederseni named after him by my mate Peter Kirk (of course, that honor was short-lived as it is now P. vittata). People who are serious about Asian tarantulas also know of Nico because of his collecting trips to Nepal and his bringing Haplocosmia himalayana and H. nepalensis into the hobby, as well as more recently Chilobrachys sp. 'Black Satan'.

As I wrote above, my next blog will cover the American tarantula hobby vs. the European tarantula hobby. But I need to "scoop" that upcoming blog a bit so you understand what I am writing here. In short, the European hobby is huge, but it also is a crowded marketplace. One German exporter who supplies a well-known American tarantula dealer/importer told me flat out "A German dealer couldn't survive without an American importer. Even though sales are poor in America, his point was that his competition is so fierce that he needs to make sales outside of Europe. But what these Europeans don't really understand - despite my educating them on the subject - is that American hobbyists primarily live paycheck to paycheck and have little money to spend on pricey tarantulas.

So ... some time ago ... when Nico first bred H. himalayana he discussed an "exclusive" arrangement with me. I could tell he thought he would make a considerable sum of money selling them in the US instead of Europe. I told him bluntly that there were very few (almost none) Americans who would pay the price and there was no way I would ever be able to sell 200, 300 or whatever it was. But it doesn't seem like he listened to me; someone who knows more about American arachnid commerce than anyone else. He still seems to get dollar signs (or euro signs) in his eyes when he thinks about selling his spiders in America. So, now his Thrigmopoeus psychedelicus were offered as an "exclusive" to this Penny character. They'll learn the hobby. There are a few silly people who will pay the ridiculous price. And at least one "pseudo dealer" has bought them wholesale (surprise, surprise, he's named above). But nobody is going to get rich. There aren't enough victims for this overpriced "pet hole". I like Nico and it certainly isn't his fault that he is trying to recoup his investment in traveling the world to bring the global hobby new species. And he is to be commended for doing just that, as long as all specimens are collected legally. And you certainly can't blame him for trying to market his spiders outside the saturated European market. Nicolai Pedersen, to the best of my knowledge, is doing good business and being smart about it. It's just sad that he has made a deal with the devil, so to speak, and will eventually be disappointed by the results.

Let me end on a more positive note. I've called some spades, spades, and I do feel like leaving you with some recommendations. If I have what you want, buy from me. There is nobody more experienced, knowledgeable and who provides better communication, shipping and after-purchase support (being humble is not part of my makeup). Buy from our best American breeders. I mentioned them earlier. They include three great friends of mine: Tom Patterson, Chad Campbell and Jason Newland (the latter once he's back at it after a hiatus while living in Peru). But as far as dealers with websites go I'll name a few. As I wrote at the beginning, the sad thing is that I can't come up with six.

First, let me disqualify two dealers. I am not going to go into detail why I am not going to endorse them, but will give you some general reasons. Ken the Bug Guy and Paul Becker are enemies. To mention one and not the other would stir up shit that is none of my business. To fairly talk about both would rehash some old stuff that I feel is unnecessary. You can do your own research. Both are the major importers from German sources. The majority of their stock comes from imports, not breeding. I've commented on this in other blogs so if you pay attention you can infer my feelings here. I've dealt with both over the past two years and there are positives and negatives to both (again, I will not specify). I have friendly professional relationships with both and would prefer to just leave it at that. I'm sure each guy holds it against me that I would even talk to the other. Maybe not, but let me presume. I have had the pleasure of spending time with Ken and find him to be a very likable guy and I look forward to sharing some cocktails with him again. I've never met Paul and have only spoken to him on the phone once. Our conversations have been strictly email. Most importantly, both are very well known and have good customer bases that are probably happy with their transactions. You can make your own decisions on them. But I am going to leave both off my recommended list because I have some reservations and because I don't want to show any bias. Plus neither needs my help as they are all over the Internet.

So, on to the few recommendations I can make. I've already mentioned American breeders as my first choice (or maybe second after me). My blog, my self-promotion. But for many, many years now the person I have recommended most is Kelly Swift at Swift Inverts. That's a no-brainer. Kelly has been at it as long as me (we're actually the same age, I'm only two or three days older!) and is a credit to our hobby. He has bred so many species over the years and keeps plugging away despite having a devastating setback a few years ago when his facility caught fire. This is the guy who deserves your business above ALL others. If he has what you're looking for please give him your business. Moving on, it gets increasingly hard. Many of the people I used to endorse are gone. Anastasia of Net-Bug is an accomplished breeder and is a popular source for tarantulas. I've never bought from her, but have sold to her and gave her a penultimate male for future breeding use. She recently posted photos on Faffbook that the male and matured and been paired. I've never seen a negative review for her and I endorse her. Jen Newman of Heartland Invertebrates is known for great service. I only know Jen casually and have never bought anything from her so I can't give a proper review. I did a recent breeding loan with her. I almost never do breeding loans. I buy males if I need them and sell them if they're not needed, but I don't do 50/50 breeding loans as a rule I can count on one hand the number of people I will exchange males with. So the fact that I loaned a male to Jen should be endorsement enough. I've never had better communication from anyone. She sent regular, highly detailed reports with photographs. Joey Mugleston of sells both reptiles and arachnids. His business name Great Basin Serpentarium seems evidence that his focus is on the former. I normally don't recommend people who don't primarily sell arachnids so I do so here with reservation. I have no experience with him and barely know him. He was selling at last summer's ATS conference and I don't think we even exchanged a word. But I know people I respect hold him in high regard so he'll be the last mention here.

The last recommendation was borderline so I guess I only made it to 3 1/2. Nowhere near the six I thought I could name. On one hand that is sad, but in reality it just goes to show how many sketchy dealers are out there and how hard it is to keep going as an American tarantula seller. I do realize that there are probably a few good people that I overlooked. But it is a changing landscape. And Swifty is the only one I have confidence will keep on going. That's because, like me, he's a true animal man to his core. He's not a hobbyist who has decided to try to make a little extra money. He will do what he does because he's passionate and money is secondary. An industrial salesman will not.

Thanks for reading my opinions. A note to those I have slammed: Don't bother writing me. You're not worth my time. Don't bother threatening me. That's a loss for you.

Happy July. Be safe on the 4th. Fingers are useful. MJ