Onwards and upwards

Onwards and upwards. I have had a few more orders this week (thank you) but I now have the most horrible cold and feel pretty grotty. I had a number of new bugs arrive this week. The Malaysian Katydids have proved extremely popular so I will be looking at getting some more bush crickets. I really love them but they are quite time consuming, they do need proper care and feeding. I will be getting some more spiders next week and I am on the look-out for more millipede species. I have kept some adults back, of various species to try and breed, it would be good to get more captive bred millipedes. Some beautiful millipedes are regularly imported into the UK but few of them seem to breed. I would love to breed the Giant Train millipedes this year but firstly I need to source some reasonably priced adults. The price of millipedes has increased over the last couple of years but I need to buy at a reasonable price in order to sell them out again. Hence the idea of trying to breed more of my own!

I am really pleased to say that I have sold the last Giant Centipede. It went off this week, within a plastic tub entombed in brown tape and a cardboard box also covered in strong tape. They are honestly the most scary of bugs. They run in every direction, have very strong jaws and are too venomous and dangerous for your average person to keep in a family home as a pet (in my opinion). I took delight in deleting the entire category of "centipedes" from my website. Also removed from my site this week was the option of paying by direct bank transfer from banks outside the UK. I just cannot continue to accept bank transfers that are not paid in sterling. It is a shame because I haven't had any foreign customers messing me around, as far as I recall they have all sent the money (unlike some of my UK customers). The problem is that with exchange rates and bank charges I almost always receive less money than the order total and it takes days to appear in my bank. This method of payment is separate from my usual methods of payments via PayPal so I don't get notification that the money has gone into my bank and I therefore need to keep checking my account each day. At least with UK banks the money is generally transferred immediately if done online and the order total is set.

The new photo that my husband put on my home page last week isn't that great. It isn't really the time of year to get a good photo of the bug house, I will certainly replace it with a better one when the plants start to grow and I have cleared up a bit! The "giant ice cream cone" that I appear to be standing next to is in fact my beloved Grapefruit tree. I grew this tree from a pip when I was little, my brother still has his one too but he has a huge conservatory to put his in. I nearly lost "Twiggy" last year, the weather was so cold for so long that most of the leaves dropped off. This year I have covered the tree in three rolls of fleece from the garden centre. Unfortunately the tree has outgrown my greenhouse and took up far too much space in my office when I attempted to bring it indoors. The pot is extremely heavy my husband was delighted as you can imagine, when I made him put it back up on my decking! I am still thinking about the idea of setting up a web cam in my bug house. I think people would be interested in watching me pack their orders and generally care for everything out there. I wouldn't leave it on all the time or I might forget and then you would get me dancing around singing or something equally daft. My hubby would clearly need to set it up as I wouldn't have a clue, he says it would be difficult to link it up as the bug house is so far from my computer indoors. I cannot leave a computer in the bug house or cockroaches, spiders and other tiny bugs would get into it and ruin it. One day! On the subject of me and technology, don't bother to send me a text. Do you realise how long it would take me to reply to a "how do I keep so and so" question by text - about an hour! I am getting more and more texts, acknowledgements of order arrivals are fine but anything else would be better in an email or just call me on the phone in your hand. Those of you who regularly read my blog will know that it frustrates me that so many people are reluctant to talk on the phone anymore. My texting skills run to OK, my daughter will confirm this, she sends me endless text messages and generally gets this one word reply (what timing, my phone has just gone beep, beep). It was a complicated text from a potential customer, I rest my case. I'm sorry but I generally ignore texts and hope that people will get the hint. If I had more time, perhaps I would reply and get into Facebook and forums but I don't have any spare time. Unfortunately I have relatives with health problems that also take up my time and of course there's that beautiful but hyper active dog of mine who needs constant walks and ongoing training.

It was a hard decision last year to give up keeping praying mantids. They are wonderful bugs and I love to watch them. They were just so time consuming as each one has to be housed and fed individually, they were very difficult to post as they moult frequently, are generally fragile and live for only a short time. I did have thoughts of getting a few in the Spring but I think visiting my local fishing tackle shop has put me off for good. The shop has obviously changed hands again and I felt very uncomfortable indeed waiting at the counter for my half pint of maggots. There were guns and hunting knives everywhere I looked. I hate guns and obviously I am not the sort of person to go hunting, shooting or indeed fishing. It was horrid, thankfully I only use maggots as food for a few of my animals now but when I kept mantids I needed various size maggots on a regular basis. I would send hubby to get them next time but he wouldn't even hold the maggots. Thankfully maggots can live for weeks in the fridge and so I won't need to go back there for ages (just remembered I put the maggots in our fridge meaning to take them down to the bug house later but I forgot). I will move them to the bug house fridge in a minute. You would not believe the fuss it causes when my family discover maggots in the fridge, they are in a special box, I can't see the problem! The only things in my bug house fridge are maggots and baby food for the geckos. There are also a few beetles in the freezer box. They were so beautiful that I couldn't bear to just throw them away when they died and I know nothing about setting bugs. I did have a spectacular Rhino beetle in the house freezer until my daughter saw it one day and had a fit. It wouldn't go in the bug freezer box as it was too big so I had to throw it away. I'm sure it would have come in useful one day!

Well cold or no cold I need to get on and feed some animals. I will be out most of the weekend so I have to get as much done today as possible. Sadly my male Golden Starburst Baboon spider didn't survive his visit to Mrs Golden Starburst Baboon. I watched them for ages but then left them to it. I hope they mated but I suspect he was just too old. He didn't look like he had been attacked, perhaps he died of exhaustion and the female will produce lots of little babies, only time will tell.

Lastly I got a new catalogue this week from the company who supplied my expensive industrial shelving before Christmas. I couldn't believe it, they are now doing the same shelving in purple, my favourite colour and I am stuck with blue and orange - it's not fair!