Spring has sprung

Spring has sprung

Published: 15/03/2018 Comments: 1

Spring has sprung, well it will be springing in just a few days. Bliss, I keep hearing talk of the “Beast from the east” returning but I just close my ears and carry on in my lovely warm bug room. It’s been an amazingly busy week but good fun. I actually had two Ginny’s Jungle events booked in one day this week, that’s a first. I have several bookings now and on top of that, orders are coming in thick and fast and just as things are going out, more animals are coming in. Thankfully my back is a great deal better ‘almost’ back to normal.

I have received scorpions, tarantulas, millipedes, beetles and more this week. I have got a great collection of tropical millipedes now. I really hope to get some of them breeding, I had one species come in that I haven’t seen before (as I write this I haven’t yet had time to put them on the website). They are from the Cameroon and very nice. I have quite a few large species and several that I have not yet managed to breed. I am learning more and more and am getting better and better at understanding their needs and breeding them.

I have some more of the Giant Leaf insects coming in this weekend, along with some young Jungle Nymph stick insects. I will be glad when the bramble starts to grow again. I am driving out in the car more and more in search of good quality leaves. The recent snow and ice has made a lot of the bramble in less sheltered areas really brittle and tatty. Mind you, when the bramble does start to grow again it is important to give a mix of old and new leaves to your stick insects. I have heard that feeding stick insects on just the new shoots is not good for them. I’m sure I should now Google the details of this but I honestly don’t have the time. I will put it on my list! (You would not believe how long my list of jobs is at the moment).

I mentioned last week about amalgamating my Virginia Cheeseman and Ginny’s Jungle websites and plans are now well and truly underway. There is a lot to do and as with most of my work, nobody else can do it for me. My daughter is still working only part time and spending the rest of her time helping me. It is great to have her around and I’m sure it’s all her efforts with social media that have created more interest in Ginny’s Jungle events. Over the years I have had many youngsters asking if they could do work experience with me and people of all ages asking if they could just come along and help me with the animals but I think having my daughter around has proved what I have always thought, the help I need is with ‘general jobs, not the animals as such’. Hopefully she is learning as we go along but she’s very adaptable and happy to follow her daily list of jobs. We both love a list and the satisfaction of deleting a job that we have completed. Actually, I think we work really well together, we are both control freaks who talk too much and panic too much. I did say a few days ago that at times I think I’m working with myself!

I think things will settle down considerably once I get the website sorted. Just today I have written the following to send out in emails when people ask about visiting me:

I am in the process of amalgamating my Virginia Cheeseman website and Ginny’s Jungle website. My business is going through considerable change and I find myself with very little free time these days.  I have run my postal business for more years than I care to admit but times are hard for small businesses and in order to keep going changes are needed. I am now having visitors to my bug room as part of my Ginny’s Jungle animal encounters, rather than allowing people to just pop in as I have done in the past. I hope the following makes sense, if not please give me a call! (I am more than happy to answer any questions).

Buy or Browse

You can book a 20 minute session time with me in my bug room where we can chat and look at the bugs. The fee is £25, you may choose to just come along, look and handle some of the animals for this fee or if you would like to buy anything from the website then the £25 fee can be used against any purchase.

This week’s photo is of my super Bunnings bucket. You may just see a bucket but I was very excited when I came across it in our new local store. It’s a great colour, you can’t beat pink and purple but it also comes with a lid and that is the important factor. I keep my bramble fresh by placing it into a bucket of water outside my bug room (the bramble would die very quickly if I kept it inside as the bug room is so hot and dry) but of course I use the bramble to feed all my stick insects so the bucket is often left devoid of bramble but full of water. It was a couple of years ago now that I found a beautiful Wood mouse drowned in my bucket one morning. I felt so sad and guilty that since that time I have always put a little wooden ladder (made for me by my long-suffering hubby) in the empty bucket but it is a pain to remember and therefore so much easier to just put the lid on. They do say that “little things please little minds”. Bunnings has replaced our Homebase store and it’s actually really good, I have bought a new lot of plastic boxes to house all my ‘food’ crickets. I am constantly lugging the boxes around, the new boxes are smaller, lighter and seem much easier to move around and of course store. Space is always a problem in my bug room, or rather lack of it.

Update on the filming due to take place in my bug room on Tuesday, as predicted last week, it was called off. This is so often the way but sometimes it comes off and then it’s great. Onwards and upwards, really, I’ve got quite enough to do anyway at the moment!

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