Where is everyone?

Where is everyone? On holiday I strongly suspect. I have had very few orders come in this week but I have had a steady flow of new stock arrive (just need to sell some of it now). I am trying to use my website more effectively and improve things but it just doesn't come naturally to me! I need to find a way that makes it easier to search for the animal you are looking for, especially tarantulas. I have a huge number of tarantulas and various sizes of each species so it is no easy task. My website guy suggested upgrading my site yesterday, panic set in but he has assured me it will be much the same as it is now but vastly improved. That sounds ok but as my regular readers will know I seriously don't like change! I didn't realise until recently that when my website was updated last October this meant that the old website would be 'switched off/deleted from the server'. I have now lost the previous two years information. The customer records are still there but the order history has disappeared. I have no idea who ordered what in all that time (I had a few choice words to say when I realised this). I am assured that this time it would be an upgrade only and no information would be lost. There seem to be a few problems when paying on my website recently. My web guy has been trying to sort it out but he cannot as yet recreate the problem and thus find a solution. PLEASE let me know if you are having problems, there are alternative ways to pay (bank transfer, cash or cheque). It only seems to happen occasionally but believe me I don't want to lose any orders and I won't know there is a problem unless you tell me! (thank you to Denis who was my guinea pig customer yesterday and had to keep trying to place his order so that my web guy could try to solve the problem).

I have been driving my pregnant scorpions around again this week, they came with me to the supermarket a couple of days ago but no babies as yet. The Asian Forest scorpions that responded so well to their car ride and promptly had babies, are doing really well. They both have a mass of tiny white babies on their backs. It is really important not to disturb them as they can panic and eat the babies. That really would be a tragedy after all this effort!

I didn't get up to London in the end last Friday, I decided I really needed to catch up on feeding all the bugs. It is a never ending job, when I finish getting all the cages done one week, it is time to start again. Last week I still had a backlog due to my holiday but I have done better this week. There are a few 'blue dots' on the shelves and boxes but they will all be replaced by 'red dots' by the end of the day and then a new colour will start tomorrow, with the new week. My great-nieces love my feeding regime, they both want to put the dots on (stickers) when they 'help' me but the youngest hasn't quite got the idea that you cannot change the colour unless that cage has been fed and cleaned, otherwise the poor animal will miss it's feed for that week! Talking of the kids, I had them two days this week and I'm pleased to report that the bug house is 'safe' again. I found the escaped tarantula, not so pleased to report that it was dead. A much smaller British spider had killed it! I have been really making an effort this week to clean under the shelves and get rid of all these nuisance spiders. It's ironic that I spend so long looking after all my tropical spiders and then so much time trying to rid the bug room of regular garden spiders.

I managed to get bitten by an Ornamental Baboon spiderling (twice), it was actually last Friday, not a good day. It bit me on the finger then I tried to catch it in a pot and it ran up my arm and bit me on the forearm. It really hurt! I was amazed how much it hurt, it was such a small spider. Needless to say there were no real after-effects, my muscle ached a bit but it stopped hurting after a couple of hours. It made me think though, (not I should be more careful, it would take all day if I started wearing gloves) I went to a snake park in Cyprus a few years ago and the guy there said that baby snakes are just as venomous as adults (I didn't know that), in fact their venom may be worse as it is concentrated. I wonder if it is the same with tarantulas? I can't imagine that an adult would be much more painful, it's fangs would be bigger so the actual bite would probably hurt more but would the venom be considerably worse? I will try not to find out!

You may notice some special offer codes in the pink box this week. I will try to figure out how to issue a discount code to more than one person with a percentage discount rather than a set amount. I had hoped to set up a half price postage code but it doesn't look like I can do that. I can set up an amount but then it will be the same discount for UK and Rest of Europe postage (there is a £5.00 difference). I'm working on it!

Have a good weekend. I will be visiting a reptile show this Sunday. I will try to be sensible and not buy too much. I have a shopping list and as I'm going with my daughter she will do her best to make me stick to it. She can be a real tyrant. We ended up having an argument last year because I wanted some baby African Clawed toads (they were gorgeous) and she pointed out that they were pets and she wouldn't drive me home if I bought any. She was right of course but this year I have to be more sensible as I have so much less space in the new bug room. I will thoroughly enjoy looking at all the beautiful, captive bred reptiles (I wonder if there will be any Mexican Parrot snakes?) but I will stick to buying invertebrates only. It is primarily a reptile show so there may not be that many bugs. It will be fun anyway and get me away from here for a bit!