Re-housing And Re-arranging

A busy week as usual. I haven't had too many new animals in but I have been re-housing and re-arranging quite a lot in my bug house. I have also had a lot of paperwork to catch up on. I spent most of Wednesday at my desk and expect to do the same today. It's amazing how the smallest of tasks can take ages. I was on the phone for 30 minutes yesterday trying to get an engaged tone put on my mobile. It drives me nuts that when I am talking on the phone, people calling get a ringing tone rather than an engaged signal. I very often finish a call only to find that I have one or two messages left for me. I then have to call these people back. If they heard an engaged tone, people would know I was using the phone and call back in a while, simple! But no it isn't, Vodafone set up an engaged tone before but when I went to Switzerland recently I switched off my answer machine and everything reset. Nobody seems to be able to help with this problem now. I have the instruction book and both hubby and I cannot see how to go about it. I've also had my daughter onto it, she lives on her phone but couldn't figure it out either.

I'm not sure what is going on with Royal Mail, I keep hearing about strikes happening up and down the country but thankfully it hasn't hit any of my deliveries. I know there is talk of a national strike in September. I really hope they get things sorted out before then.

It is ten weeks today until my holiday. We are going on a cruise for two weeks and yes, I won it in a competition! Ten weeks sounds like a long time but I have a lot of bugs so the countdown begins today to cut live stock down to a more manageable level. I will be leaving my daughter to look after everything, with help as usual from my mother in-law, son and nephew. I have a two week rule, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, cockroaches etc can be more or less set up for two weeks but stick insects, praying mantids, grasshoppers, hermit crabs need far more attention and therefore I must sell as many as possible and of course not get more in. This means that I will be having plenty of special offers but also that if you want it, buy it now, once it's gone it's gone.

I will be doing more advertising to clear things. I actually advertise very little these days. Most of my new customers arrive by word of mouth (often on forums) or an online search. I have just placed an advert in the new reptile magazine 'Practical Reptile Keeping', it will be in the October issue which comes out in September. I really like this magazine, I have subscribed from the beginning (April I think), it is full of information on reptiles, amphibians and plenty of bugs too. The production is great, I love all the colour photos, they are of a very high standard. The distribution is good, WH Smiths sell it and many larger supermarkets. I spotted it in my local Tesco recently.

I am continuing to try and breed as many bugs as possible. I think everyone agrees that captive bred is better than wild caught. I have several species of praying mantids now laying eggs and also millipedes. I don't have many adult males that match up with mature females but I will be putting my huge Paulo Fiery Red Rump spiders together this week. I hope the mating goes well because I don't fancy intervening, they are very big spiders and a bit temperamental at times. Unfortunately I realised yesterday that flies had attacked my Tanzanian Blonde Baboon egg sac. The sac was near to hatching. The nymphs inside are at the 'eggs with legs' stage. I spent some considerable time last night separating and cleaning the nymphs. I have set them up in a clean box on white kitchen roll. I will have to check them each day but I hope that at least some will survive. I think the egg sac got a bit too damp so it was my fault.

Last but not least we lost Kali this week. Kali was my first Corn snake. She was actually my daughter's, Georgie got her when she was three years old (she's seventeen now) so it was very sad. We have buried her in the wildlife garden.