In February 2006 i was contacted by proxy (Duke from venomlist.com) and public post that Greg had a "female all ready to go" for a mature male P. irimina ("Venezuelan suntiger tarantula") that i had loaned to Duke and was at that time in Duke's possession. I paid my $40 to have Duke ship the spider to greg for a standard 50/50. The spider arrived very late February or very early March.
April 5 Greg's suntiger made an eggsac and he pulled my male from her cage (after over a month of cohabitation).
June 12 the eggsac hatched. I emailed greg to start arranging when and how he was going to ship to me... but greg said that the eggsac was a double clutch from mating her last year, and therefore none of the babies were mine. He said he still had my mail and had some other projects for him. At this point i began to get the feeling that Greg was not a 100% straight shooter. Why would he have me ship a male to him if there was no way it was going to contribute to a sac, in his mind?
Now, here this is the first thing i have really big problems with. Greg NEVER told me his female was already mated and had already produced one measly 17 sling sac before it mated with my male! I would say this is pretty dang critical information!!! I have to say, i was pretty taken aback by this development. Greg should have told me his female was already mated this intermolt to let me decided if i wanted to start a non-standard breeding loan with him.
Greg's whole point of why he didn't owe me any spiderlings was that my male wasn't there for a full gestation period. This just goes to show that greg does not really understand exactly what is going on when tarantulas mate and breed. Because the nature of the specifics of how tarantulas breed it is impossible to say for sure if my male mated with greg's female and contributed to the sac. *Especially* considering my male cohabitated, unobserved, for something like a month with the female before she made her eggsac
Female tarantulas in the wild often mate with two or more males. it has been demonstrated in studies, and observations by Steve Nunn and others, that females who mate with more than one male are more likely to lay an eggsac and produce more offspring. Futher, tarantulas use what is known as deferred reproduction. The sperm females take into themeselves is not active until it is mixed with the eggs... which happens as the female is laying the eggsac. What this means is that a male could mate with a female 1 day before she makes an eggsac... and still contribute to the eggsac! This also means that some tarantulas can wait as long as THREE YEARS between mating and making a viable eggsac.
December 15, 2006 i emailed greg and asked about my male and he told me that it died after two weeks and he never did anything with it. This is the next thing i have a problem with. According to his own posts (since he didn't email or pm me ONCE informing me about what was going on with my male... ever) the male lived in his possession for almost SIX MONTHS!
At this point and subsequently, greg told me numerous times that he would give me some spiderlings. The only problem was that greg was trading and selling off the spiderlings as fast as he could... in fact, he was even giving them away as freebies!
I have sent many PMs to greg, and for a while it seemed like he was going to be reasonable. He promised me slings a number of times and never delivered. Greg stopped replying to my pms or emails and instead asked Duke to speak to me on his behalf. After i explained the situation... and the specifics of how tarantulas reproduce... Duke told both me and greg that i was right and greg should give me the spiderlings he owes me. Greg never responded to that, nor has he responded to ANY of the other attempts to resolve the situation to our mutual satisfaction. Throughout this whole series of unfortunate events, cruelly called a breeding loan, greg always seemed to be confused on details... but mysteriously anytime he was confused the confusion served his favor.
And for the record... instead of demanding half of the 122 spiderling eggsac that greg's female produced, as is my full right according to our 50/50 agreement, i said it would be fair to send me 33% of the spiderlings, in light of the non-standard nature of the breeding loan. considering the "nonstandard" part was sprung as a surprise on me, i consider this MUCH more than fair.
In short, i would never do any sort of business with Greg again as he was very unfair, selfish, and underhanded through out the whole ordeal. Even if greg is positive he is right (which he isn't) he still should have sent me *some* of the spiderlings to cover for the fact that he failed to inform me of all the pertinent details about his female before our "50/50" loan.
There may be people who like centipedes. I have seen people handling tarantulas and scorpions, but never a centipede handler. I would regard such a person with deep suspicion...Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede on its underbelly "And here is my big good centipede." If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:07 am Post subject: Positive
Hmmm....I thought I might see you post that on the Itch one of these days Caco!
My Experience: Positive
Well......I had a positive experience with Greg Wolfe ("Fang" on VL)
A looooong while ago, I bought a few P. cambridgei slings from him (now sub-adult juveniles and penultimate males).
At the time (and maybe to this day) he didn't use PayPal, so I had to mail a check. No big deal. Just took time. And it's easy enough to put a stop on a check if something goes wrong. So, I was not worried.
I got the slings in the mail soon enough. Communication was good.
The only thing that I didn't like, was that he charged a bit more than the usual $20 on shipping overnight......
He said it was morel ike $25 or $30 for USPS, from Indiana to Los Angeles.
This was not true, since I looked it up....and I've NEVER seen such a high price on shipping.
But, he cut me some slack when I argued with him, and said that he'd pay the difference, so he only charged me $20 on shipping.
ALL SPIDERS ARRIVED SAFE AND SOUND. GOOD PACKING, EXCELLENT CONDITION. GREAT COMMUNICATION.
Overall, I had a positive experience with Greg. And he's a totally nice guy on VL and has some very cool species.
I know that our beloved Caco had a bad experience, unfortunately. But I guess even the best of us, sometimes have bad transactions. I was very sorry to hear about Caco's misfortune with Greg. (I remember that Caco posted this review on VL just a few days after I mailed out my check to Greg!!!)
Anyway, overall rating for me: Positive
_________________ -Neshan W. Sarkisian
B 4 α Q RU/16 Q T Π ???
"I just cant <EDIT> without a roach in my mouth"
-Cacoseraph
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