Hubbies Birthday

Another week flies by. It is my husband's 'significant' birthday today. He tells everyone that he is six younger than me but he forgets to tell them that it is actually six weeks, not months or years. I still remember the day we met as sixteen year olds starting our first job in the City of London. We have lots of things planned for this weekend so I won't be around much and may not get to reply to emails until Monday.

I have had more livestock in again this week. I have some lovely Horse-head grasshoppers. They are really strange bugs, they look like stick insects, feed on bramble like stick insects but they are grasshoppers. Their little faces are so cute, I'm not sure which Disney film they were in, it might have been 'A Bugs Life' or was it 'Ants'? I have some more praying mantids coming in next week. I haven't had so many different species for ages. I love mantids, I think it's the way that they turn around to watch you that makes them so appealing. Millipedes are selling well at the moment, I checked on my Giant Madagascan Pill millipedes yesterday, they are still doing really well. I think this is the best chance I have ever had of breeding them, so fingers crossed. The large African Flat millipedes are really different. They seem to spend all their time on the surface and they are very active. I only have half a dozen but they have trampled and squashed down everything in their box. I often collect moss, pieces of bark and interesting twigs while I am walking my dog but the cages never stay looking good for long, the animals always wreck my creations!

Nothing has hatched this week, I checked on my Crested gecko eggs only to discover that they had dried out. I was so upset, one of the eggs had tried to hatch and had a perfect little gecko inside. I have been looking at incubators but they are very expensive. I think I will have to try and make one. Lots of people have been telling me that it is not that difficult. I will have to consult my best fried 'Google'. I don't know how I ever managed without Google, I use it every single day. It is fantastic for bug info and generally comes up with lots of photos too. I wish I could get into forums but I don't really understand them, I want to know who I am talking to. I don't want to converse with a picture of a spider and a name like 'Eight Legged Monster'.

I have decided that I need an evening when people can reach me on the phone. I have chosen Tuesday as I am rarely out on that day (and as I said before there is no Coronation Street). I have been looking at the data on my website hits list and it seems that 7pm - 9pm is a very popular time for people to check out my site. I will try to answer as many calls as possible but if the landline is engaged then I am talking on it and cannot answer the mobile! I have realised recently that my mobile beeps when I am using the phone and another call comes in. I haven't worked out yet how to answer the second call and say that I'm on the phone. The mobile seems to just go onto the answer machine, there is no engaged signal so people think I am just not answering (oh technology).

Everything in the garden is looking good, the bramble has started to grow and I have planted salad seeds for me and the bugs. It costs a fortune to feed the snails during the winter, lettuce is 75p each at the moment. I do sometimes think that giant snails are not worth keeping but my baby Giant Mountain snails are doing really well. They are growing quite fast and have really pretty markings on their shells now. I was offered some Hypericum eating stick insects this week but I learnt my lesson when I had them before. Nobody wanted to buy them because they didn't know what Hypericum looked like and I was reduced to raiding the neighbour's gardens and Homebase car park. After that I grew my own supply of Hypericum but decided that they were not worth keeping so I gave away both the stick insects and plants (it's a damn ugly plant).

Well that's it, I'm off to feed the mantids, it's a job on my 'tick list' for today.