October now and getting colder

October now and getting colder but the beginning of the month was great and on the day of the AES exhibition last Saturday, the weather was hot and sunny. I have been attending the exhibition for many years and it is generally extremely cold in the hall, so it certainly made a nice change. It was really lovely to meet so many of my customers, most of who I had only spoken to on the phone or conversed with by email. Lots of people came up and introduced themselves and this certainly made it a fun day. I took along stick insects, cockroaches and a few other animals, plus equipment. I think I got it just about right, we certainly made enough to cover the cost of the tables and some of my new purchases. I thought I had bought lots of new things but once home, I realised how little I had purchased. I proved my point to myself, it isn't really possible to buy and sell at an exhibition. I did get some interesting stick insects (yes, I know the idea was to cut down on plant eating bugs before the winter but I just couldn't resist them). I was pleased to get some Question Mark cockroaches and Green Banana cockroaches, these are two species that I have been after for ages, fingers crossed that I can get them breeding. I am actually selling a lot of cockroaches these days. I have always liked cockroaches but who would have thought that they would become a large part of my work? I certainly realised from taking a stand at the show, that I really do have an awful lot of 'mini animals' to look after, no wonder I am always so busy. I don't think that anybody else keeps the range that I do. Just keeping spiders would be so much easier, their care is minimal and they are very easy to pack and post but I love all the other bugs too.

My husband and daughter were very helpful at the show, even though our daughter turned up only five minutes before the show started (we had been there for two hours setting up), she got stuck in traffic (stuck in bed more likely). We had to take two cars as we couldn't leave our dog all day so someone had to leave early and get home to her, luckily Kempton Park (where the show was held) is not too far away. It was only ten minutes away from where we used to live. The show is certainly a social event, it was packed out as usual and well organised. Saturday evening and all day Sunday were spent unpacking stock that I hadn't sold and of course housing up my new animals. Sadly I only sold two of my adult male tarantulas and they were common species. The rest our now back in their boxes, having enjoyed a day out. It is such a shame to have so many stunning males and no females to mate them with. They will only live for about a year so the chances are that I will have them for the remainder of their lives. It doesn't make good business sense to spend all that time looking after them but I couldn't possibly kill them off!

I did buy some new spiders at the show but not enough so I have ordered a large number of tarantulas of various species, which should arrive next week. They will all be captive bred and most of them will be spiderlings. I have quite a few adults and larger spiders at the moment but they often don't sell well. I find people generally prefer to buy in young ones and watch them grow. I have now removed my 'spider gallery' from the website, it really wasn't worth the time it took to photograph each individual spider and post specific information on each one.

Just a couple of points before I get on with feeding my multitude of mini beasts. The larger spiders all need feeding and some of the stick insects, I collected new bramble from the woods yesterday but it only got as far as the bucket of water on my verandah. I fed the Privet eating ones yesterday because I have Privet growing in my garden. We have some damn ugly plants growing in our garden just to feed the bugs!

Our daughter has got a job, she finished her A levels this summer and has been working part time in Pets At Home and part time as a volunteer with the local youth action group. However she needed a proper job, one that pays a proper wage. She had three interviews for the job and they told her this week that she has got it! She will be working in a recruitment agency, not what she had planned but my parents ran a recruitment agency in Fleet Street, London, so perhaps it was her destiny.

Lots of people ask me what the coloured dots mean that are sometimes on the spider's name labels that I send out. They don't really mean anything to anyone else, they are just part of my obsession with keeping everything in order. They tell me things like when the spider was last fed and the size of the spider, they are size and colour coded. I would confuse myself if I didn't have it written down. I have lists for everything and get great pleasure out of ticking things off each day. My daughter is as bad as me, she writes herself a 'tick list' when she is working in Pets At Home. People laugh at us but we would hate to forget to feed or clean out an animal, better to be safe than sorry.

Lastly, please tell me if you see something wrong on my site! I am really grateful when someone points out a spelling mistake or an obvious mistake when I have 'cut and pasted' something. Only this week I realised that the Domino cockroach information was saying that I only had adult males and was waiting for females to mature. I spotted the mistake when I was adding the Question Mark cockroaches to the site, they are a similar species so I wanted to check the information. I have sold hundreds of these cockroaches and have had both sexes for months. Goodness knows how long this false information was on there and amazingly nobody had queried it. I will have to think about giving a prize to anyone finding a mistake, that way everyone will be looking.