Spring is in the air!
Spring is in the air! The sun is shining, there are frogs frolicking in the ponds and buds unfurling all over the garden. The warm weather can't come quickly enough for me, I'm sure you all know by now how much I hate the cold. My son and his fiancee bought a lovely teak sun lounger for my birthday but I think it's a bit early to put it out in the garden yet. I won't be available very much next week as I will be out on Monday and then away for a few days from Thursday to Sunday. I will probably only be able to post out parcels on Tuesday and Wednesday so please get your orders to me A.S.A.P. if you need something urgently next week. My competition entries are going very well, I will be staying in a London hotel for three nights next week and then I have won a four night break in April and a week's cruising around the Mediterranean in May! It's all great but it is causing chaos with work. Thankfully my super daughter and mother in-law will care for all the animals while I'm away but sadly nobody will be running my business. I will put the dates that I'm unavailable on my Home page. I will be taking hubby with me but I have had several offers to accompany me on the cruise (it's on a Clipper ship, very luxurious and evidently worth several thousand pounds).
The bug house is just about full to capacity. I am working really hard to keep on top of all the feeding and cleaning. I wouldn't know where I was if it wasn't for my 'weekly tick list' and coloured stickers, the colour changes weekly so a glance around the bug house should reveal what has and hasn't been tended to this week. Spiders are the most popular creatures that I sell these days but I have been trying to promote scorpions as good pets and I'm pleased to say that they are going well at the moment. It is obvious from looking at my sales that people do prefer to purchase captive bred stock. There is no doubt that captive bred animals sell better than wild caught. It's a shame that most suppliers don't state whether an animal is wild caught or not. If they are mostly importing animals I suppose the reason is obvious! I am quite low on millipedes at the moment but I hoping to get some more soon. I have been asked if I will have any praying mantids soon but although I'm still not absolutely sure, I doubt it. I really adore them but they are so time consuming and they moult so frequently that I worry about posting them.
This week I have been changing the size details on each of the tarantula spiders shown on my website. It is a long and arduous task but the old details were out of date and hopefully the sizing will now be easier to understand. They should all now say the following:
It is difficult to give a size for the spiders as stock is constantly changing. Generally the small size is a spiderling up to 1.5cm body length (small will be SMALL), juvenile is a grown on spiderling with a body length of about 1.5cm, medium 2cm to 4cm and a large is 4cm to fully adult (but a lot depends on the species!)
If you would like me to measure the body length of any medium or large spider please send me an email. I cannot measure the body length of small and juvenile size spiders as they are constantly changing.
If you find an entry that doesn't say this please let me know. I would be most grateful as I am sick of checking them, there are so many spiders and several size categories to go through. I am now wishing that I had added a bit about sexing spiders. Something along the lines of I can't sex them and yes, of course you want a female, so do I but what do you imagine I would do with all the males if I could sex them? (perhaps I won't say anything but it does drive me nuts). So many people are just lied to, I get lots of people telling me that they bought a guaranteed female and it later matured into a male. I won't lie to you, I simply don't know and don't want to know! Believe me, a lot of other people don't know either but if you ask, they will tell you that your chosen spider is a female.
I have reached the decision that I have got to harden my heart and be more sensible about people calling to collect their orders. I often get people ringing and asking for a low value or single item because they are in the area on a certain day. I am always busy and people never want to call at the same time or even on the same day. I find myself waiting around for people who rarely have the correct money and sometimes arrive up to an hour late. I work from the bug house so I end up coming indoors and hanging around. I have therefore decided to have an absolute rule that everyone has to place their order on the website before collecting and then at least the goods are paid for. This said, it is really nice to meet up with my customers so I will get organised and arrange one or two open days in the better weather.
Our puppy Teddi is growing fast, she is absolutely adorable but she does like to 'help' me. She insists on gardening with me, everything I dig up or cut off she grabs and runs away with and now she has discovered that she can reach my desk so she keeps jumping up while I am typing. I'm not very good at typing and she is slowing me down no end by pressing keys all over the place.