Virginia Cheeseman Blog

Too much! I have decided this week that I have got to cut down on my mini zoo. I am spending way too much of my life feeding and cleaning all these little creatures. I love them but praying mantids, stick insects, beetles, hermit crabs etc. take hours of care and simply don't make enough profit for all the hard work. I'm not getting any younger and there is only so much that one person can do. Some people sell reptiles, I love reptiles but I wouldn't want to sell vertebrate animals, however there is clearly a lot more money in it. Some people sell just spiders, which is easy compared to what I do. Sadly it's the huge range of animals that make my working day longer and longer. My husband has been trying to tell me this for ages, he told me to stop buying in new stick insect species but I carried on and this week I have really felt swamped! I had last Thursday off which is a main posting day and I have been paying the price ever since by playing catch up all week. It...

Christmas is approaching fast. Last Sunday I spent most of the afternoon trying to set up the bugs for my Christmas card photo shoot. Oh, it wasn't easy on my own but I did it and the cards have been ordered, so fingers crossed they look ok. I showed my daughter the pictures on the computer and they made her laugh so that's got to be good. I can't go for technically brilliant so funny will do fine. I bought a pretty cuddly toy from Tesco and dressed him up with various bugs and spiders. Nobody would behave and I ended up with them everywhere. The stick insects wanted to climb over each other and I had to make sure that the Mexican Red Knee spider didn't devour any of my little friends. The giant millipede that was acting as a scarf, decided to disgrace himself and it wasn't easy to clean off on a white fluffy toy (I won't be able to give him to one of the kids for Christmas now!). Last year was just as chaotic. I used corn flour (it was out of date in the kitche...

Bugs and spiders everywhere, what a busy week I've had. The spiders that should have arrived last Friday were held up in the post until Monday and then I received a large number of scorpions, spiders and millipedes on Wednesday, grasshoppers came in yesterday and I have more spiders coming in today. I have spent many hours sorting out all the new stock on top of the usual feeding, cleaning, posting and paperwork! I really must cut back a bit now or all of Christmas and New Year will be taken up with running my 'mini zoo'. I've got some great creatures and they all seem happy and healthy. When a customer sent me photos of his Barking Birdeater spiderlings, I could be patient no longer and decided to open one of my Barking Birdeater egg sacs. I was really pleased to see plump little 'eggs with legs'. They are quite active and should be moulting into spiderlings soon. One of my Trinidad Olive spiders is looking like she could be an adult female. It is difficult to...

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween. It's such a good time for spider enthusiasts, I got to decorate the house with spider things and wear my purple spider earrings without anyone telling me I was nuts. We had a party at my nephew's house and it was most enjoyable. Today is Bonfire Night, which isn't quite the same for me as I hate fireworks. I have hated them ever since a Jumping Jack jumped into my wellington boot when I was about 8 (a very long time ago). This week has been busy as usual until yesterday when I only had two orders to post off. It is so strange how it goes, sometimes I have more orders than I can cope with but then I have practically none. At least it gave me time to sort out little homes for all the new spiders that I have coming in this afternoon. I will be setting off to collect my weekly cricket supply soon. It would be great to breed my own but it is just so complicated to rear all the different sizes that I need for the various sized spiders and bu...