Mexican Red Knee eating a budgie.

I still remember after buying this lovely spider a work colleague handed me a baby budgie found dead in its nest in his bird aviary, looking back it could have brought mites into the vivarium. Tarantulas keepers normally give there spiders the occasional pinkie (baby mice) but this dead budgie was quite large and I thought it would not be interested, later in the evening I placed the dead bird in front of the tarantula. The following morning it started to eat the baby bird, excitingly laying a bed of silk to feed on. When I returned 12 hours later from work the tarantula was just finishing the budgie, what shocked me at the time was the tarantula had eaten everything in 12 hours, there was nothing left. Although bones were probably soft, the tarantula had liquefied and eaten the dead bird’s skull, beak, feet everything had been broken down with its powerful digestive enzymes. After eating the bird its abdomen looked like it was about to burst and the tarantula did not eat-anything else for over 3 months.
40 Years later I am still keeping Tarantulas after my first Mexican Red Knee pictured right and have not lost my interest in keeping these fascinating animals.