Oh boy... Just hours after I got my blizzard male to start eating...
Now I am suspecting that one of my females are gravid.
She's usually the biggest glutton of the bunch, eating way more crickets and worms and everything than all the others. From tongs, then again hunts. However, 3 nights ago, she didn't take a thing from my tongs. She started digging in a corner in front of the hide on the warm side, pulling the corner of the paper towel up. (The hide is on the back of the enclosure and there is a gap between the glass front and the hide, which is where she is digging. Both the digging spot and the hide is directly on top of the 1/3 of the tank that has a under tank heating pad.) When I opened the enclosure door there, she stops digging and climbs out. I put her back in and she climbs out. It's like she wants to dig a tunnel there in the corner and when I open the door she wants to use that instead to leave. She also has been trying to climb the walls on the warm side right next to where she has been digging. There is some mesh there and she has been hanging on the walls.
Like I said she didn't take anything from the tongs. But I dropped in a few crickets and she hunted them down and ate them all. So I thought she was just being a pain that night.
The second night, she didn't take anything from the tongs. She didn't hunt either. Same old digging and clawing and climbing in the exact same spot.
It occured to me that she may be gravid. So I looked at her belly. I honestly can't see a darn thing that looks like an egg. I tried to take pictures but she won't let me. I have to hold her with both hands to turn her over, and even when I got a picture it looked like a blurry mass with flash that was too close and out of focus. But I can't see a darn thing myself (not that I am experienced with gravid females).
So just in case, I made an egg laying box. I got a tupperware and cut two holes in it. They are both on two corners of the box, sort of on the top corner so that a little of the top as well as the side is cut off. I filled the inside with moist peat halfway up. I put her in front of the hole and she went in but came straight back out. Then she tried squishing herself around the sides of the box etc. going around the back. But never entering the holes again (which is bigger than needs be).
Today, I see that she hasn't dug at all in the egg box, but has been digging AGAIN overnight at the same corner where she had been before.
I don't know if she is gravid or what. And if she is, should I put the egg box where she is digging. I really don't want to because that is a gap between the warm hide and the glass and I would have to rearrage the whole darn cage to fit any kind of egg box in that little gap. But that's where she's been digging, climbing and trying to get out at.
Please help!
