Everything is 'Springing' to life

Everything is 'Springing' to life. My male snakes have gone into mating mode as I call it. They are constantly bashing around in their tank both day and night. I have two female and two male Corn snakes but since letting them breed and not being able to even give the babies away, they are kept well apart in separate vivariums. I went into the woods across from where we live yesterday to collect bramble and found that the shoots are growing into pretty, bright green leaves. I have seen it mentioned many times that the new leaves are poisonous to stick insects but I don't recall ever having problems myself. I always try to give my stick insects a mix of old and new leaves but the old leaves are often so dry that the stick insects make a beeline for the new fresh ones. I have plenty of frogspawn appearing in my pond so I'm happy.

I have been having a bit of a spring clean in my bug room this week. I never like to put all my eggs in one basket as it were, so I generally have two cages of most bugs that I am breeding, cockroaches, millipedes, beetles etc. Colonies can fail for many reasons such as becoming too dry, too damp, too cold, too hot, mites are sometimes a problem if the cockroaches get too damp and woodlice can breed out of all proportion if I don’t keep on top of them in the millipede boxes. There is always something that needs cleaning, feeding, moving, labelling. There really is never a dull moment in my bug room. I do find it a problem and always have done that most people have no idea just how much time I spend on animal care each day. I am always being asked out for coffee, lunch or just to do something ‘when I have a spare moment’ but I don’t have spare moments. Some things about working from home are great but there are certainly disadvantages too. Sadly, I only really seem to relax when I go out. I am off up to London tomorrow, I am going to a meeting with my competitions club, it is mainly an email group but we get together four times a year and they are always fun events. What I really need though is a holiday and a bit of sunshine J

I put a photo on my Facebook page yesterday, it showed my Olive millipedes feeding from a jelly pot. I opened the box to pack some for an order and was surprised to see a mass of millipedes with their heads in the pot. I have tried jelly pots with various millipedes and seen very little interest in them. The photo wasn’t great because most of the millipedes had disbursed by the time I got my phone out and switched the camera on. I have always liked millipedes, as a child I used to watch them marching along in the garden and I have often seen millipedes when we go on holiday. In Cyprus, they have a species that climb the hotel walls at night (outside that is, I don’t think the other guests would be too pleased if they were inside). There is still a lot to learn about the various species, I once thought that they just fed on leaf litter and fruit but there are a multitude of things that millipedes seem to like. We have had a lot of wind recently and many of the high up twigs from the Oak trees have fallen to the ground. I have been collecting the lichen covered twigs and find the millipedes strip the lichen and seem to love it. In the Autumn, I collected various mushrooms and put these in my millipede boxes. I have never had anything poison them, I just think they leave things if they don’t like it. Variety is the spice of life as they say.

I was looking at books on Amazon this week (I don’t think a week goes by when I don’t buy something from Amazon) and came across ‘Your First Millipede and Cockroach’. I am selling this book for only 99p but Amazon are selling it at £3.49! I bought a huge box of them ages ago, I don’t think the book has been reprinted so I assume the ones on Amazon won’t be any newer than mine.

I’m sure I have more to say but as always time is short. I have someone coming to collect my car for its annual service soon and then I need to take Teddi for a walk. As I am out all day tomorrow I have a lot of work to get through today. Let’s hope the sun keeps shining, I have planted some seeds in my beautiful new greenhouse and really need to get out in the garden and do some weeding soon L

This week’s photo: Frogspawn in our pond