When it comes to pets, people around the world don’t always mean
dogs, cats or birds — few have a love of exotic animals too. From
iguanas to lizards and even snakes, people love adopting unusual
animals, including tarantulas! Yes, the creepy, scary hairy
arachnids. Well, now imagine living with not one or two about 1,500
of them.
Meet 28-year old Ming Cu, a woman from Indonesia who has been
collecting tarantulas since 2010 as a hobby. But with time her
interest grew and now she shares her home in Bandung City with
1,500-odd spiders. She even started out a website called Spider
Lover Pet Shop to sell the unusual pets online in 2012, and
has a large base of consumers.
According to reports, Cu’s obsession with tarantulas began when
she found a beautifully coloured tarantula in her backyard. She
only took some photos of it, but the more she looked at the
pictures, the more fascinated she became with the eight-legged
creatures. She started looking for sellers online and finally got
her first one and before she knew it she had built quite a
collection. With so many pets, came great care and a proper setup
to nature and store her pets and in the past seven years, Cu has
spent over $55,000 on tarantulas.
The business venture started out with a friend who has quit over
time, but Cu still is in awe with the insects, even though she has
been bitten “several times.”
Cu also breeds the eight-legged creature and admits there are
difficulties. “The challenge in breeding and keeping thousands of
tarantulas is that I’m actually doing it alone, at first, and so it
takes me time, personal time, there is no me time at all,” she told
Ruptly.
The Indonesian spider enthusiast, who graduated from Bandung
Institute of Technology in Product Designing, keeps her hairy pets
in jars and glass terrariums and sources them from around the
world.
Her bizarre obsession has also earned her fame and is known as
“Queen Tarantula”, a nickname she’s quite proud of it.