There are your regular pets like the dog, cat and birds. Then they are the exotic ones like snakes, frogs and even lizards. But then there is your weird kind of pet which is exactly what this comes under. A 28-year-old girl in Indonesia has an odd obsession with spiders and she lives with about 1,500 of them!
Ming Cu, a native of Bandung City, has a passion for these hairy hair-raising creatures since 2010. She first saw a tarantula in her backyard and clicked photos of it immediately. But later, the more she looked at the pictures, the more she fell in love with the creatures. Finally, after searching online for some time she found a seller and began acquiring her collection of spiders. Slowly the obsession became her profession and she even started to sell the spiders to other such enthusiasts.
Ming studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Product Designing but when she told her parents of her love towards these creatures, they were skeptical and scared but supportive. So finally, with the help of her friend she began bagging her prized possessions from all over the world which she now keeps in jars or glass terrariums. Although her friend has now long left the job, she continues to take care of her pets and says, “In the last seven years, I have spent tens of thousands on buying my favorite animals. I have 60 different varieties of tarantulas, which I have keep in different jars according to their type and size. I feed them regularly and take care of them like they were my babies.”
But with such a passion comes some problems. Ming has been bitten several times and also faces trouble in the maintenance of the insects. “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. But this doesn’t deter her from her obsession and she has spent almost $55,000 on the spiders till date.
Because of her love for the leggy spiders, Ming has been given the title of ‘Queen Tarantula’, a moniker of which she is quite proud. Looks like she has been bitten badly!
