I encountered an unwanted arachnid this week

I encountered an unwanted arachnid this week, a tick, attached to my hip - yuk. I had been to Richmond park (looking for Stag beetles but I think it was a bit too early) and I know they are rife there because of the deer. I deal with arachnids every day but I didn't want to keep this one.

The barbeque last Saturday, what can I say, it was cold and poured with rain non stop! It was great to see so many family and friends but the house was a little full to say the least. On the work front it has been all go. Another bank holiday meant that I couldn't post any orders on Monday but I have sent a record number since then. May was my busiest month ever. It was certainly a good idea to put the tarantula spiders in size order on my website but it has resulted in most of my large spiders selling out in the first week! I have ordered a lot of new animals, they should arrive next week and perhaps the following week too. Some of the creatures that I am expecting are scorpions, centipedes, large beetles, train millipedes, jumping spiders, Orb Web spiders and some adult tarantulas as well as smaller ones too. It's going to be busy next week but at least I am off to a spa today. My daughter and I are going up to Mayfair, it was a competition win from last year. We couldn't go earlier as we had to wait until Georgie turned 18. The weather is lovely now so I will be wearing the new outfit that I bought for the barbeque. It was far too cold on Saturday so I stayed in my jeans and put a clean tee shirt on!

Most things in the bug house seem to be going fine. One of my Giant Huntsman spiders is now carrying around a second egg sac. Unfortunately I have given up on my praying mantis egg sacs. I had three different species but none of them hatched. I think they may have got a bit too dry. I am so glad that I have decided to stop selling mantids. They are fascinating creatures but not easy to keep and their life span is just so short. With a spider it increases in value as it grows so keeping it for some time is no problem and it is fun to watch them grow. With praying mantids few people want them when they are little, as they grow nobody wants to pay a realistic price for my time and effort and then once they are adult, unless I can sell them at their prime they become unsellable. I have some Taiwan Flower mantids that I have bred, they are freshly moulted adults and yet I just cannot sell them. They are going for a ridiculously low price and I haven't sold one! It looks like they will be my last praying mantids. I had the offer of some beautiful mantis species for next week, amongst them Orchid mantids but I said 'no thanks'. Millipedes seem to be selling well at the moment and I now have several species, both adults and young. I did have one disaster this week, an adult tarantula that I have had for ages escaped from her box. I think the lid of her box had warped in the heat and the corner lifted up. She had escaped during the night and I found her on the floor in the morning, with her abdomen split. Sadly there was nothing I could do for her, I am assuming that she had jumped from some height. In the wild she may have had a soft landing on leaves or moss but unfortunately my floor is wood and therefore solid. I was most upset she was a beautiful, friendly spider.

My Crested geckos had two babies this week, the first they have produced this year. They are so cute. Anyway I had better get a move on. It is quite a trek from here to get into London. Before we moved to Buckinghamshire I had always lived within walking distance of an underground station.