Oh the joys of being self employed

Oh the joys of being self employed. I have been rushed off my feet for weeks and then suddenly I have had hardly any orders at all this week. I have no idea why? It is most odd but I can't say I am too upset because it has given me some time to catch up and get on top of things a bit. I say a bit because I could honestly just keep going with all these animals, the more I do, the more there seems to be that needs doing! I have purchased some new millipedes this week and some captive bred Pancake slugs. I was really excited to get these slugs as I have only had wild caught adults before. They grow huge and I think they are really beautiful (my husband disagrees). I have lots of new spiders coming in this afternoon so I will certainly have plenty to do today. They will all be spiderlings but there's a good selection. I am especially pleased to be getting the Green Bottle Blue in again. Lots of people have asked for specific spiders recently but I don't have time to keep a 'wants' list, I never really know what is about to come in, so I just tell people to keep checking my site. I update things on the site every day, there are always things coming and going and I frequently change the special offers and bulk buy sections.

When I was really snowed under with work recently several people asked why I don't employ someone to help. There are times when I could really do with some help but it isn't very practical when you work from home and I would certainly have been out of pocket if I had to pay someone wages this week! When things are really busy I honestly just need an extra pair of hands and the help that I need is more to do with household chores than the animals. People often volunteer to help with the animals but nobody volunteers to help with the housework. I did end up paying my daughter for her help over half term but she drove me nuts sticking on the television whenever she 'thought' there was nothing else to do or sneaking off to her room.

I have put some information about CITES on the website this week. I was asked recently about which animals I cannot send to non EU countries, so I started looking into it. I don't import any animals so I don't know much about CITES but I think I have it sorted now. It seems there is no problem sending any animals to EU countries but there are a few animals that I cannot send to non EU countries. It appears to be only Imperial scorpions and various Mexican tarantulas. Talking of Imperial scorpions, I now have about 60 in anticipation of their importation being banned soon. They are a great pet species, very easy to keep and breed but it is taking a considerable time to keep them all fed and happy. Several are visibly pregnant but only one has given birth so far.

I mentioned last week that there don't appear to be any frogs in my garden. I'm sure my ponds are usually full of frogspawn at this time of year. I still haven't seen any frogs but I did find one clump of spawn sticking out of my nature pond. I couldn't understand why it was mostly out of the water but when I looked more closely I realised that the silly frog had laid her eggs on top of a brick. I turned the brick on it's side to try and submerge the spawn but I couldn't detach the clump as it was firmly stuck to the brick. I had to move it because initially when I saw it the pond was frozen and the spawn too. It is a pretty lousy looking pond as I made it myself but the wildlife seems to really like it.

My hubby printed out a sales sheet from the website statistics this week. It shows all my sales for this year and makes fascinating reading. It shows how many of each item I have sold and how much money I have taken on each. There were no huge shocks but I was certainly pleased to see how well my home bred spiderlings have gone. I am really trying to get some more scorpion species - watch this space.