Back from a wonderful, relaxing break in Cyprus

Back from a wonderful, relaxing break in Cyprus. The hot, sunny weather was fantastic, I'm sure I'm cold blooded like my bugs. I really can't cope with cold weather, we arrived back at Luton airport in the early hours of Sunday morning and had to wade in our flip flops from the plane to the transfer bus and then with our cases to our car - yuck. I could bore you with the details of my holiday but I will move onto the bugs.

While I was away with our daughter, my hubby did his best with the bug house. He really doesn't like any creepy crawlies and unfortunately the Hissing cockroach tanks needed daily feeding. I love cockroaches but he found it a real ordeal as they are possibly his least favourite bugs (after spiders, which he wouldn't go near except in an emergency). I tried hard to set everything up to look after itself for the week but it certainly isn't easy. I spent weeks cutting back on stock, I do intend to stick to my guns and continue concentrating on animals that can be left as opposed to those that need daily care. I have been gradually selling off stick insects and not replacing them. It's a shame because I started off with stick insects all those years ago but I just cannot find the time to keep everything going on my own. This week has been a nightmare, by Tuesday I was tearing my hair out and not knowing which way to turn. I was trying to do things in order i.e. deal with emails in the order they arrived but then people kept ringing with enquiries and the emails kept pouring in. Obviously everything needed feeding upon my return and there just hasn't been enough hours in a day. I have begun restocking as promised before I went away. I collected a number of new millipedes, spiders and scorpions yesterday, I had some spiderlings arrive in the post today and next week I have a large number of new spider species arriving from Europe. It really is all go!

I won't be around this weekend to catch up so next week is set to be more of the same but I'm sure I will get there in the end. I'm just glad that the holiday was so relaxing, there is rarely time to relax at home. The bugs are all looking good, lots of breeding going on. Some Horse-head grasshoppers hatched while I was away, the Indian stick insects have had a population explosion as they tend to. I found that they had almost taken over my 'mixed' stick insect cage so I have now separated them out and put them into their own large, net cage. I have several scorpions of various species that certainly look gravid, I haven't yet checked my millipede boxes, fingers crossed I will find some little ones in there. My female corn snake decided to lay eggs the day before I went away. I do hope they hatch this year, the eggs she laid last year didn't result in any babies. I think snakes are amazing, I did of course look for them out in Cyprus but yet again I didn't see a single one. I didn't see a lot of wildlife at all, a few lizards, some rather boring white butterflies and one pretty little green praying mantis. I heard lots of Cicadas (one of my favourite bugs) but I only managed to locate one and that flew off before I could properly see it.

I'm ok collecting bramble, privet, Oak and other food plants for my animals now. With all this rain the plants have not stopped growing, our garden looks like a jungle.

Well I'm tired now, I am actually writing this on Thursday evening rather than Friday as I usually do. I know I won't have time tomorrow as I need to tackle the huge job of feeding all the medium and large size tarantulas. I did the small ones yesterday, the scorpions today, the stick insects just about every day, it goes on and on. That's it I'm off to bed now, tomorrow is another day!