It is surprising where you find new members

[Yvonne Woolley]

It is really amazing where you find interest in our hobby , My postie has been delivering to us for some years now and he and his son are coming to the expo AND intent on bringing something home with them, Mark's mum who gave him a lift to his first show is now collecting Ts herself I am still working on his dad lol. but it just goes to show that introduce people to your well kept Ts and show them how attractive you can set up a viv and still give a Tarantula all that it needs how many people say oh I didn't know you could make them look so nice!!! so go on invite people in and show off you collection and lets get many more people into the hobby, You know the one they had never thought of before.

[Eleanor]

Yvonne, well done for encouraging your postie! Not the same thing at all, but when our Sainsburys delivery guy noticed a snake tank in our front room and wanted to tell me all about his bearded dragon, that really pleased me. It's so rare to just bump into someone else interested in the same things we are. I get so much pleasure also from introducing our friends' children to the spiders; it's a good feeling when you know that you've done something to increase the number of people out there who think spiders are interesting, not horrible things.

[Sarah Willis]

Since I got my first T in February, I've been showing photos of her off to everybody I speak to and a number of my friends have said things like "isn't she pretty" and have said they have been surprised to find they look on her as a beautiful animal and not a scary, creepy beast. My boyfriend was the same. When I first became interested in T's he prayed I wouldn't go ahead and buy one and now I have he's completely fascinated and is happy to handle her too. In fact when I bought her, it was him who picked her out of the several I looked at. I think a lot of people assume tarantulas will be horrible scary things and then get a pleasant surprise when they actually see one.

[Mark Harrison]

There is sadly a lot of people who still think of spiders as vicious evil creatures, and i imagine the film arachnophobia did nothing for people already terrified by spiders lol. People always remark how pretty some sp are (P.Murinus "OBT" etc), although a friend did see my female P.regalis at full stretch and commented on how he is pretty glad we dont get them over here lol.