Starting this blog early

I'm starting this blog a day early as tomorrow (Friday) is my husband's birthday and he has a day off work. I can't possibly have the whole day off as I am going up to London on Saturday (without hubby) but I feel I need to give him a little bit of time. Let's face it my menagerie takes up almost all my time right now. It's been a very busy week, I'm sure my bug room is shrinking! I seriously can't find room for everything, I have so many new animals and my own collection keeps expanding as everything starts reproducing in the Spring. It's lovely but a bit hectic. My two male snakes have gone off to their new home which is very sad. People are always asking why I don't do reptiles if I love them so much but that is the problem, I love them too much and would find it a wrench to part with them. I know it is sensible to just keep my four snakes but I am already missing my boys.

I need more tanks with lids in my bug room but there needs to be enough space for me to open them so the tanks cannot be slotted underneath anything. The Exo Terre vivariums are great as they open at the front but there are gaps around the door that small bugs can escape from. They look really good and are fine for larger bugs but I can't leave things to hatch in there as they start coming out the gaps. I have discovered this with stick insects, spiderlings, crickets etc. I'm wondering about putting another table in the middle of the room? This would make it quite difficult to get around but let's face it I have very few visitors (however hard I try to encourage people) and I'm not that big so perhaps as a temporary measure at this busy time, it would be a good idea. I don't know if anyone has noticed but I have taken off the 'notes to visitors' section on my website. I'm quite happy for people to call and collect an order but I just about give up on accepting visitors to look around as hardly anyone actually turns up. I get everything ready, all tidied up and then hang around for ages only to discover when I call, that the person has 'forgotten' or 'been held up' or some other rotten excuse (sorry but it's true).

Postage goes up again on Monday, I won't be putting my prices up but I will certainly be looking to increase my postal rates at the end of the year. I am still using heat packs in almost all my parcels and have been since October. I made the decision not to charge for them but I can't maintain this next year as it has cost me a fortune! Not only do I have to pay for the heat packs but the extra weight and packaging needed in the colder months means that the postal charges are far higher than they are for me in the warmer months. Roll on summer!

I finally managed to get a photo of Gloria's babies for Facebook (a little of focus) but I had to remove her first as she kept striking at me. She is a wild caught Orange Baboon tarantula (they aren't called OBTs for nothing - orrible bitey thing). She is the biggest OBT I have ever seen and always up for a fight but also quite beautiful in her own way. I now have a spare tank in our dining room where my smallest snake was housed (now in with mum in a large vivarium) and I would like to put Gloria in there but I think the family would freak out. I am going to keep her as a pet but I think she will have to stay in my bug room. I have put various snaps on Facebook but still haven't found the time to get any further, perhaps over Easter?

I heard an advert on the radio yesterday, something about a phone that can screen for sales/nuisance calls. If it truly exists I want one! I cannot believe how many of the calls to my work line are now 'junk calls', so many that I rarely answer the phone if it doesn't display a number. I am actually toying with the idea of doing away with my work landline altogether. It's just a thought as I do realise that some people prefer to call a landline rather than my mobile. It is however much better to call my mobile as I wear it on my belt. The only time I don't answer is if I am already talking on the phone or am out somewhere that I can't easily speak.

Lastly a little note on the subject of sexing tarantulas. Almost every day I am asked for females only. It is a real bug bear, obviously we all want females but I can't engineer it!Last week I was very disappointed to find that my beautiful Furry Beauty spider had moulted into a mature male. He had always been a docile spider and I was happy to keep him, hence the price of £50 that he was set at on the website. I actually had two and sold one (probably female?). He completely changed before his moult and reared up in a threat pose as I opened his box and now sadly he will probably be with me for the rest of his short life. I would love to pass him on but this species is rare, I don't know anyone with an adult female which sadly now makes him unsalable. It really isn't easy to sex a tarantula so do take care when buying a 'guaranteed' female, they are not always as stated (believe me, I like a good moan and many people like to moan to me, I hear endless stories of females moulting into males). I have even heard recently of someone buying up cheap tarantulas sold as immature males at a bug show and then reselling them as unsexed! Now that's mean.

Anyway Happy Easter, I probably won't get around to writing a blog next Friday being a bank holiday and please get your orders in ASAP as I can only post on Monday and Tuesday next week. I daren't post Wednesday just in case anything is delayed as it wouldn't be delivered until Saturday or even the following Tuesday (I hate bank holidays, they really muck up my posting schedule). Any European orders received now will not go out now until Tuesday 7th April.

Don't eat too much chocolate (I'm sure I will, I am a chocoholic).