First Day Of Spring!

First Day Of Spring! Well officially I'm told it is but looking out of the office window it could be mid-Winter. The sky is completely grey, I have my camera poised but I can't imagine we are going to see anything of the eclipse. If you are further north hopefully you will see it, I was looking forward to viewing the eclipse (oh dear I am moaning again). I have loads to say this week, it has been so busy but as ever time is limited and even more so today as the spiders that I had coming from Europe didn't arrive until 4pm yesterday. I always collect my nephew's kids from school on Thursday afternoons and we do things together until they are collected in the evening. Well all we got to do yesterday was 'pot up' spiderlings. We worked tirelessly and when hubby came in he took over dinner making duties but still I couldn't get all the spiders sorted. I will get back to it as soon as I finish the blog!

Thankfully the spiders were brilliantly packed and all look fine but the Parcel Force office is so far away from here that we always seem to be the last drop of the day. If they had arrived in the morning there would have been no problem but as the day went on it became more difficult. I contacted Parcel Force several times and was promised that the parcel was close and would arrive before I had to leave for the school but of course it didn't and I ended up calling on a friend to house/parcel sit, this made her late for an appointment. My mother in-law wasn't well enough to come over and help.

Once the spiders are fed, housed and labelled I will be entering them on the website. I hope to get them all on today. There are some super species, some are quite small but most are a reasonable size and of course they will soon grow. This week saw the hatching of Gloria's egg sac! Gloria being one of the most monstrous tarantulas I have ever come across but I admire her and she has become a pet. She is a wild caught Orange Baboon tarantula and the largest specimen I have ever seen. I attempted to post a picture of the babies on my Facebook page but she came out of her flowerpot with all guns blazing (fangs blazing) and I had to give up as it was clearly distressing her. I could see that the nymphs were moulting so I will wait until the spiderlings are running around and then snap a photo for Facebook.

Great news about my snakes, I have found a home for the two surplus males (I hate to call them that as they are much loved, I just don't have room for them). Thanks to last week's blog they are going to a zoo in Cambridgeshire and will be taken out for educational talks which is perfect as they are used to being handled regularly and are very gentle and friendly.

I can't type fast enough (why didn't I do typing as a subject at school? Or keyboard skills as they call it now) my typing is so slow and now there are more family dramas (too complicated to explain but nothing serious) I will have to give up and save everything I was going to write for next week! One thing I will say quickly, I have received a huge number of new tarantulas over the last two weeks, only to find that most of my orders  have been for millipedes, stick insects and cockroaches. Honestly I can't win but I am certainly not moaning about having lots of orders to post off. The Winter was pretty dire, well certainly the end of 2014. I'm sure the spiders will start to sell soon and they are much easier to care for than most pet bugs so hanging onto them is not a problem.

I will end with just saying that everything is 'Springing to life' in the bug room. The first baby Horse-head grasshoppers have just hatched, they are so cute, their little faces are great. I have been sorting out my stick insect cages, still trying to cut down on them but they keep hatching!

I'm off to a Mother's Day spa treat tomorrow with my daughter and do I think I deserve it? Yes I do! Must go, I'm about to be invaded by kids again.