I hope you all had a Happy Halloween

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween. It's such a good time for spider enthusiasts, I got to decorate the house with spider things and wear my purple spider earrings without anyone telling me I was nuts. We had a party at my nephew's house and it was most enjoyable. Today is Bonfire Night, which isn't quite the same for me as I hate fireworks. I have hated them ever since a Jumping Jack jumped into my wellington boot when I was about 8 (a very long time ago).

This week has been busy as usual until yesterday when I only had two orders to post off. It is so strange how it goes, sometimes I have more orders than I can cope with but then I have practically none. At least it gave me time to sort out little homes for all the new spiders that I have coming in this afternoon. I will be setting off to collect my weekly cricket supply soon. It would be great to breed my own but it is just so complicated to rear all the different sizes that I need for the various sized spiders and bugs. When I have bred my own they end up all different sizes in the same tank and it is impossible to sort them out. Many people have made the mistake of putting a cricket in with a spider that is too big, me included. Unfortunately this can result in the cricket eating the spider, a very upsetting and costly mistake. I certainly find it easier to buy in my crickets. I tip the tubs into large plastic boxes with pieces of cardboard egg trays and some food, then I can use them as needed. It isn't nice feeding animals to other animals but I like to think of it as recycling. Unfortunately I don't have any vegetarian spiders. Talking of vegetarians, I spent ages yesterday feeding all my various stick insects. Why on earth have they decided to have a population explosion when winter is about to set in? I do hope we don't have another winter like the last one. It is no fun digging bramble out of the snow. I seem to have a lot of Privet eating stick insects and my Privet bush is dropping it's leaves. It is far too exposed where I planted it in my garden, I will soon be clipping bits off of my neighbour's hedges but I have also grown some Privet in pots this year. They are in the greenhouse for 'emergency' use. Privet takes root really well if you just leave it in a jar of water. I mustn't make the same mistake as I did with the Eucalyptus trees. I planted lots of trees around the garden but now I don't have any Eucalyptus eating bugs. At least they are pretty trees but Privet is quite ugly. When I say I planted the trees, I actually supervised while my hubby planted them.

I haven't opened any of the Barking Birdeater egg sacs but I am becoming a bit worried as I think they should have hatched before now. It probably would have been a good idea to write down when the egg sacs were laid! I think I really will open one over the weekend and just put myself out of my misery and see if I have any spiderlings. I haven't hatched any of my own spiderlings for months now. It is probably due to the fact that I hardly keep any males these days. Sales of spiders have increased hugely since setting up this website. It used to be that when a spider moulted into an adult male nobody bought him but now, when I do have a male he usually sells before I have even thought about finding him a mate.

I have been looking at the final posting dates for Christmas and have decided that I will probably stop posting out bugs on Thursday the week before, which is December 16th. I posted right up until Christmas last year and it didn't allow me to do all the family things that I need to do in the Christmas week. I realise that people want to receive their bugs as near to Christmas as they can but people who leave it to the last minute this year may be disappointed. We spent Christmas at our son's house last year but this year we have everyone coming to us.

Well I had better set off to collect the crickets. I seem to need more and more as my arachnid empire grows. I have several species of scorpion arriving next week and of course even more tarantulas!