A busy week, catching up on everything. I haven't had anything new in this week but I have several new species of tarantula spiders coming in next week. I received my weekly delivery of crickets yesterday so I will be spending most of today feeding spiders and scorpions. I fed my multitude of praying mantids yesterday. Many are maturing into beautiful adults, the African are a stunning lime green. I have an adult male/female pair and several yet to mature. The first of the Taiwan Flower mantids has matured, he now has long, delicate wings. Hopefully a female will moult into an adult soon.
It's all go with my new web site! I spoke to the web designer yesterday and he is getting started today. I am very nervous about a whole new site, it will keep track of everything and I'm sure it will be fantastic in the end but I don't like change. People expect to be able to place orders online now and bringing my business into the 21 st century is clearly long over due. I think it will be a mammoth task to put all my stock onto the new site so I don't anticipate it being up and running for some time - hopefully Christmas!
Everything is going well in the bug house, I have mated my Paulo Fiery Red Rump and Natal Brown spiders. Both males lived to tell the tale which is always good. The Huntsman spiders clearly mated successfully as the female is now running around with an egg sac. I'm not sure how long it will take to hatch. My Tanzanian Blonde Baboon spiderlings are doing ok, I managed to rescue about a dozen from their rather unpleasant, rotting egg sac a couple of weeks ago. I have yet to mate my Golden Starburst Baboon spiders (saving the best until last or just plucking up the courage), they are very pretty tarantulas but so aggressive. I'm not sure if my Paraguay Beauty and Peruvian Green Velvet spiders are fully adult females but I have adult males of both species (several of the latter) so I may cautiously put them together this week. I will have my piece of cardboard ready to separate them if necessary. The problem is that mating can look very much like fighting so I don't want to upset them if I can help it. I generally find that tarantulas ignore each other if they are not ready to mate. I never put any spiders together that are hungry, I always make sure they are very well fed - just in case.
The open afternoon went very well last Saturday, so well that I have already arranged another one for September 19 th. Visitors were down on my previous open afternoons (probably due to holidays) but it was actually very pleasant as I had more time to chat to people individually rather than rushing from one person or family to another. I enjoyed the afternoon but I could have done without being stung by a bee just beforehand. I was clearing up in the garden and brushed against a bush. How rude, when I provide them with so many flowers in my wildlife garden! I must say it really hurt as it was under my arm and I still have a red mark there now.
Last but not least a quick update on Luka my adorable dog. Lots of you have asked how she got on at the vets last Friday. It was a very difficult day for her and the veterinary staff, she doesn't like strangers at the best of times but she had x-rays and blood tests and it turns out that she has an enlarged heart among other things. She is on lots of pills and we will have to see how she goes over the next couple of weeks.
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