An Emotional Week

Well what an emotional week, the bugs are all fine but everything else seems to have gone wrong. I have spent so much time sorting out family problems and pets that I am very behind with the bugs. I have only just come in from feeding the mantids and it's gone 8pm. I am writing my blog this evening rather than Friday morning as usual because my dog has to go in early tomorrow for tests at the vets.

I have way too many praying mantids, they are amazing creatures but keeping them is time consuming and very disheartening when I sell so few. I don't know why mantids are such slow sellers because they are brilliant 'bug pets' and at this time of year they are easy to keep because they will feed on any suitable sized creatures from the garden. The Taiwan Flower mantids are looking great now, they still don't look much like flowers but they are moulting and several are turning green. I haven't seen them as adults so it is quite exciting. I thought I had found something exciting in my front garden earlier. I thought it was a Glow Worm but having done a Google search with my daughter I think it was a Rove beetle so I have let it go. I read in a local magazine that there are Glow Worms around this area but I have never seen one unfortunately.

I thought I had mated my Huntsman spiders last week but the next day one moulted. I have put them together again today so fingers crossed. I'm still not sure if they are an adult pair but time will tell. I have several pairs of adult tarantulas so I have set up some boxes today and I will spend an evening introducing them over the weekend. Hopefully all will go well but I don't fancy intervening if the Paulo Fiery Red Rumps don't get on. They are huge spiders with a very unfriendly demeanour.

My new web site is looking like reality now. I have been in contact with a web builder and a friend who no longer sells bugs. It seems we may be able to adapt his old site rather than start from scratch which would be brilliant. I doubt very much if he will be reading my blog but I am very grateful to him. Taking online payments sounds like a dream come true, people are very good about ringing through their card details each and every time they order but it isn't very convenient. I think the site will take some time to get up and running as it seems that each item for sale has to be entered separately. When you look at my site you realise just how many items I have on there.

We took some more photos for the web site last weekend, mostly spiders and scorpions but also some stick insects. My husband used the new ring flash that we bought for his camera and the results were really good. I think it will take some getting used to, several of the spiders merged into the substrate and were barely visible so I think we will have to pay more attention to the background. I like my purple sand that features in quite a few of our photos. It has been pointed out to me that people use some of my photos on their own sites. I think the purple sand is a bit of a give-away!

Don't forget my open afternoon tomorrow. I'm not guessing how many people will turn up this time (I was sure that nobody would come last month and the place was packed).