Skip to main content

Lots of sunshine, I could get used to this!

Lots of sunshine, I could get used to this! Sorry if the weather where you are hasn't been quite so good but High Wycombe has been basking in sunshine all week. I'm not missing the usual April showers one bit. Everything in the garden is growing, no more visiting the Homebase car park for bramble thank goodness. My new 'very expensive' Rhinoceros cockroaches are doing well. I was told to keep them on damp sand with dry leaves on top, they are all still mooching around ok. I really need to do a Google search, I have been told that they eat mostly dried Eucalyptus leaves. I have given them various leaves including Eucalyptus but just to be on the safe side I have also given them my usual cockroach mix.

I have an awful lot of spiderlings at the moment, some are in together and therefore need separating out or I will end up with a few fat ones. I made a bit of a mistake this week when I bought in a batch of spiderlings and accidently put them into a tank where there were still a few baboon spiderlings. I think I have all of the larger ones removed now but I can't be totally sure as the baboon spiders dig down and hide in the substrate. I'm not sure how many of the smaller spiderlings I have lost, time will tell. They were rather expensive food!

Royal Mail have been hopeless this week. I sent out 7 parcels on Tuesday and only 4 arrived the next day. The bugs were all fine but when I visited the post office yesterday to claim my postage back I was told that the Special Delivery next day guarantee had been suspended due to the volcanic ash situation! I had not been told this when I posted the parcels and there were no notices anywhere. I looked online and there was no mention of it. I cannot see why mail to the mainland would be affected? Thankfully the airports are all up and running now so I'm sure everything will be fine by Monday.

I have had a change around with my 'notes for visitors' this week. Weekday visits are difficult as I just don't have the time to clear everything up and get things ready for people looking around the bug house. I don't mind people placing orders and picking them up at the door during the week but if somebody wants to choose their animals then Saturday is the best day. I am setting aside Saturdays when my husband is working, I have a couple of people coming over tomorrow. I'm not sure about next Saturday, although my husband is working, my mother in-law is going into hospital on Friday for her long awaited hip replacement operation. Hopefully the operation will go well and she will be out after a few days but she will initially need a lot of help from us as she lives alone. I need to tweak my 'notes to visitors' a bit more. They look rather abrupt to me but it is so difficult. My husband hates the minimum spend idea but I cannot afford the time to do all that clearing up and preparing for someone to buy a pot of fruit flies and they do! My husband favours putting 'no time wasters' (as has been suggested by many of my male customers), surely this is far more rude than a minimum spend? Perhaps I will take the minimum spend off and cross my fingers. It would be good to have a few visitors on a Saturday rather than just one or two but it has to be by appointment as I cannot run an open afternoon alone. I'm always changing things, we will see how it goes. It is nice to meet people face to face and have a chat.

Must get a move on, lots of spiderlings to feed this morning. One last thing, the Blue Tits are again nesting in the box opposite my office window. The camera is switched on, first there was a clutch of eggs and now mum is sitting on top keeping them warm. I do hope they all make it this year and I don't have to dash off to St Tiggywinkles again (mummy bird disappeared last year and I had to rescue the abandoned babies).


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A surreal week indeed!

A surreal week indeed! I sent off my last orders on Monday and the remainder of my bugs will be leaving me on Friday. So many people are congratulating me on my retirement but I prefer the good luck messages. I didn’t think I would ever retire but it all became too much, not just for me but my family too. Our home was taken over by my work. The bug room was my domain but the rest of the house had gradually filled up with ‘stuff’, plastic boxes, cardboard boxes, tanks etc. and I never ever had any time. Whatever task I was doing, I was always thinking of the next job on the list. People keep asking what I am going to do with my time now. In the short term I will be clearing everything out, especially the loft which is full to the brim. I’m a bit of a hoarder so that really doesn’t help 😄 Lack of time was indeed the main factor for finishing my business but there was also the constant “I only want a female tarantula” 😤, leaving Europe was a big blow, Covid, the animal welfare licensin...

My biggest announcement ever!

My biggest announcement ever! It is with a heavy heart that I am informing everyone of my impending retirement as “The Bug Lady”. I have been running my business for approximately 45 years so it has been pretty good J Things change over the years, I was one of the only bug dealers in the early days and possibly the only woman but these days, every man and his dog is selling tarantulas and “proper bugs” seem to have fallen out of favour. I have been cutting down on stock for some time and had hoped to keep going without the tarantulas but it hasn’t worked out. I expect to fully retire by the end of this year but a lot depends on my wonderful customers (you!) as I need to sell off a large number of little creatures. I still have 24 species of tarantula (multiple numbers of most), millipedes, cockroaches, isopods, scorpions, slugs etc. Do take a look on my website, once they are gone, they are gone! If you want to help me, please spread the word to all your bug mad friends. I have lots of...

Getting there!

Getting there! My plans for retirement are going pretty well, I cannot believe all the wonderful messages that I have received over the last few weeks, many of them have had me in tears. It is very emotional to give up my little friends after a lifetime of keeping them and my human friends too but the time is right so I will keep plodding on until everything has gone. I won’t be changing my phone number and I hope to keep my email address, therefore, those who want to, can stay in touch. I had planned for a big sale on September 1st but orders are still going strong so an all-out clearance sale doesn’t sound such a great idea. I have decided instead to reduce items individually but I do keep changing my mind J It is really difficult to retire over a period of time, I couldn’t make the decision and then stop, like most people are able to. I can’t set a date in the future because I simply don’t know when sales will dry up. The idea of an open day sadly became unworkable, I just don’t hav...