The insects seemed to be especially popular this year and the team was really pleased to see the high level of interest in this field of terraristics. What else would happen to surprise the team on the last day of the exhibition? So far there had only been positive developments ( Hands On Terraristics: Easter exhibition in the Animal Park Part 4/5 ).
In this five-part series we’ll give detailed reports about the exhibition, the animals and our experiences. To highlight our cooperation with the Terrarienkreis Kiel (TKK), we have included the club members’ reports in journal form unedited to this post. We are always delighted to cooperate with passionate people, especially in this increasingly shrinking hobby segment.
Below you will find the original report by Philipp Kirchhoff and his team from Terrarienkreis Kiel:
Easter Monday (22 April 2019 – the final day)
The weather remained fantastic and the visitors continued to stream in. We really couldn't have asked for more. At this point we need to mention that with crowds like this the well-being of the animals took priority and we were unfortunately unable to meet every demand for interaction with them. In all due responsibility to them, we could only remove the animals from the terrariums for a limited time.
They needed longer and longer breaks between their removal from their terrariums. We knew that tarantulas are becoming more and more popular so we had 10 different species in the exhibition this year. One of the tarantulas needed to be replaced because the temperature in the tropical hall dropped so much at night that it buried itself. Once back home it soon reappeared again. The tarantulas were joined by a sweet male jumping spider (Phiddipus regius) named Kaiser Franz. A big name for a tiny animal, because the spider was only about 1.5 cm tall! We also had local spider species like the giant house spider and the longbodied cellar spider with us. Our concern was to give the visitors an understanding of these animals living so close to us, and to show them how useful they are.
Yes, these spiders shed their outer skin to grow too!
At the end of the exhibition, both were released into freedom again. With a lot of patience, education and direct animal contact we managed to help two women with an extreme fear of eight-legged animals. Even if they are still a little fearful it was a big step in the right direction. Towards the end of the day there was a very special photo shooting with some selected animals for our long-time sponsor JBL.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my warmest gratitude for the great support with all that is important for our pets, because this support is what has allowed us to organize this exhibition for so many years. Thanks to Tierpark Gettorf for the good cooperation. Also a huge praise and thank you to the team of the Terrarienkreis Kiel for their fabulous work during the exhibition days. We would also like to thank our youngsters for their tireless commitment and we expressed this with our traditional “one for the road” drink in the animal park’ café before the journey home.
We had so many great conversations, despite the masses of visitors, and received so much praise from them that we can only come to one conclusion: This was simply a great exhibition.
Now it’s home sweet home for the animals and humans. At Halloween we will be back with a small but well-chosen selection of our little monsters in the Tierpark Gettorf. This year for the first time we’ll be there for two days. We’re already looking forward to it.
