I'm cold and wet

I'm cold and wet, having just returned from the park with my very fluffy, energetic dog, Teddi. I cannot cope with the cold, I'm sure it is partly to do with spending so much time in my 'tropical' bug house. Christmas is nearly here and then I can look forward to Spring!

It has been a slow week sales wise, Christmas is never a busy time for my business. I think that most of my customers buy spiders and bugs for themselves and of course generally people don't spend money on themselves at this time of year. The schools and universities are winding down for the end of term and therefore not placing any orders. Almost all of the orders that have come in this week, have been for tarantulas. I have now put the details for my "Spider Open Afternoon" on the website, if you have any questions do give me a call. If you are thinking of coming along I would really appreciate you letting me know. I am still getting to grips with my iPhone5. My hubby has set up my emails to come through on the phone but yesterday there were some problems so I think he may need to set it up again. We won't get together now until Sunday due to work and Christmas events. Hopefully my new phone case will arrive from Amazon today. I have so far bought two cases and am not happy with either of them. The new case will clip sideways onto my belt and looks perfect. I keep putting my phone down and then not remembering to take it out to the bug house with me. I can't wait to once again have the phone attached to me at all times as was the case with my old one. I actually had an email from Amazon recently, they were inviting me to a local meeting to discuss stocking my products. I was very surprised but didn't go along as I can't see how it would work. I don't think they realised that everything is alive!

I haven't yet plucked up the courage to put my pair of Ornamental Baboon spiders together but I need to be brave and get on with it. The female is huge and really brightly coloured and the male only matured a couple of weeks ago so the timing is perfect. I will check all my breeding spiders today as they are due to be fed. I am expecting the Feather Leg Baboon egg sac to hatch at any time. This week I received a number of new spiders, among them several fully adult females from a guy who sadly needed to part with his collection, due to a house move. These spiders will be available to view on my open afternoon, there are some exquisite Poecilotheria species and a beautiful Giant White Knee. There is also a sub-adult female, Mexican Red Knee who sadly had a bad moult, she is missing one leg and one leg is misshapen. I am hopeful that she will recover given time. I will be keeping her as a pet and have named her Matilda. I don't think Stephanie can go on for much longer, she is my daughter's Mexican Red Knee and is now 17 years old. Matilda will make a great replacement when the time comes, assuming she survives her next moult. I also acquired with the spiders a very nice vivarium. I have set it up in my office and although there is nothing live in it at the moment I may move my snakes into it. I am a bit concerned that I may not be able to maintain the temperature that they require but it could be their 'holiday home' during the day and I can put them back in the bug house at night. It isn't cold during the day as I have all the heating on but it goes off at night and I'm not sure if the heat mats would cope ok.

Although I have been cutting back on 'plant eating bugs' I still need to collect a fair amount of bramble for my mini zoo. I went into the woods, across the road from my house a couple of days ago and cut bramble, collected leaf litter and also pieces of rotten wood. I wanted to get some more fungus that I found recently but a neighbour warned me that the pheasant shoot was on that morning. I showed him where I needed to walk and he said he thought that would be fine. I was extremely quick and literally tore the chunks of fungus off the dead tree. Getting shot for my bug business really would be going too far. I have no idea what the fungus is (will have to consult my friend Google) but I have discovered that millipedes love it and the baby millipedes cluster on it. I have also bought mushrooms from the greengrocers for my millipedes on occasion and they seem to be appreciated. I have lots of baby millipedes now, I'm not sure what they all are, they seem very slow to grow. Hopefully they will be ready to sell when the warmer weather comes along. I'm very pleased to have babies, as I said in my blog earlier in the year they are often difficult to breed. Sadly I have still had no luck with the Giant Train millipedes. I have kept all the substrate but can't see any sign of eggs or babies, even though I had loads of adults and saw them mating frequently. Oh well maybe next year?

Must get on, lots of non-work Christmas things to do. I will be up in London tomorrow at my competitions club Christmas party and next week hubby and I will be going to Eastbourne for a couple of nights (his work do). It won't affect my posting out orders as we are not setting off until Thursday afternoon. The fitness awards event that I mentioned I was going to last Friday, was amazing and for a second year running our gym won an award. It was held in the Midlands and we didn't get back until 4.30am! It was a brilliant night but I couldn't do that too often at my age!

Off to see the bugs now, all snug in their log cabin. I cannot believe that the sun has come out and the sky is bright blue. When I sat down to write this the sleet was pouring down and the sky was grey and covered by cloud.