Kai Dartt's Official Blog

“It’s Alive!”: The Long Overdue Revival of My Blog  Hello once again my beloved audience! If there were cobwebs in this space, I suppose that would be fitting for my content. Don’t worry, my spiders and other pets  have not been neglected as my blog. In fact, the girls I have now are thriving! More on them later, though. For now, let me summarize where I’m at and the direction I have planned for this blog in the near future.  Photography  Since I last updated, you’d better believe I’ve gotten some neat shots of my favorite fuzzy friends! I intend on tidying up the photography album and adding new pictures very soon. This is at the top of my to-do list for sprucing up this old blog, as well as a nice thematic makeover at some point. I’ve amassed quite the collection of interesting and intimate footage of many of my creatures, too, but that content will primarily go on my YouTube channel. I’ve got a big project in the makings for that too, so keep your eyes peeled! Poems Poems are my fav

                Long time no see, Reader! I have been away for a while working on lots of new things. My most notable and relevant project, though, is my choose your own adventure story!                 I have always tried to find ways to make jumping spiders more relatable to the general public. If spiders appear less foreign to people, then maybe they would be randomly killed less often. My passion for spiders sometimes is enough to change a person's mind about Salticids, along with how well behaved my babies are! Right now, my girls that I show to people are Honey and Kasdyn. I used Kasdyn as a potential player name in my game because I liked it so much, and partially due to how far Kas has come in the past week or so. She's a spaz, but when she calms down a bit, she's such a good girl! Honey is also very well mannered. The difference between my two girls may come from an age difference, but Honey is less prone to wandering the whole time. That's not to say that

How Spiders Made Me Write My First Book As you readers scroll through my site it will become increasingly apparent that I love spiders . I love to take pictures of them, study them, build enclosures for them, and breed them. Specifically, I've taken a liking to one species in the jumping spider, or Salticidae family, called the bold jumping spider, or Phidippus audax .  They are delightfully fuzzy and fun to look at, with green fangs called chelicerae ( Singular chelicera ) and adorable central eyes made for enhanced depth perception. Along with having 20/20 (or 160/160) vision, these Salticidae spiders are hunters rather than passive collectors. Although they do make silk webs, they are primarily used as shelter and a place to lay their egg cases rather than the traditional use of ensnaring prey. Jumpers have amazing jumping power, and they use their sharp vision to seek out tasty insects instead of sitting in a web. Two of my captive bred infant audaxes duke it out

A Long Winded Tale of a Sixteen Year Old and Four Books (And Tips for Aspiring Young Authors) There are so many people out there who are brilliant writers, many of them who likely have more talent than me. There are many people out there who, despite all of the things they have to say, have not a single published work to their name. What sets the authors apart from these talented individuals who have yet to publish his or her literary masterpiece? What exactly does it take  to write and publish a book? For me, I don't think I could have written my first book without the inspiration that came from my first pet spider, Bean. For those of you who don't know, my book, Narrations From a Spectator of Bean , is a day by day narrative about the lives of jumping spiders. The whole thing started with my newfound fascination with one of the juvenile P. audaxes, ending with a deep love for all things eight legged.  I always wanted to write a book. In the sixth grade, I wro