An eventful week

An eventful week. It was the British Tarantula society's annual show last Sunday, the society's 30th anniversary and of course I have been around since the beginning when Ann and Frank Webb set it up. The show was great, obviously a lot of hard work had gone into it, it was much better this year as the exhibition was held on the ground floor of the football stadium, rather than upstairs. I really enjoyed the show but couldn't stay until the end, I would like to have been there for the judging of exhibits but had to get home and sort out my new purchases and believe me there were a lot of new purchases! I finally finished adding all the stock to my website yesterday and I intend to finish housing all the animals up properly today (they have been fed and watered but need to go into more spacious homes). I'm so glad that I checked on everything when we got back as some twit (I would happily call him that to his face if I knew who he was) had packed up his animals in airtight food containers. I bought a scorpion, a spider and a colony of Dubia cockroaches from him. Although the scorpion and spider were fine, the poor cockroaches looked entirely dead. I have seen this before with crickets and other bugs, they look completely gone but given some air and a little time they can sometimes recover. I could see that some of the smaller nymphs were twitching and after a couple of hours quite a few had sprung back to life. I left the container open over night and put in some damp substrate and food, by the morning about 3/4 had survived their ordeal. I just hope other people who made purchases from this guy didn't leave their animals until the next day because that would certainly have been too long.

I have spent a lot of time sorting out things in the bug room this week and it actually looks quite tidy for a change. It is 'the' birthday week in our family, four close members in as many days and it is our daughter's tomorrow. We are hoping for sunshine on Sunday when we have a barbeque. I'm also hoping Monday will be nice as we are planning a day out to recuperate, perhaps Kew Gardens? I think just about everything I do has the same theme, either animals or plants. I have booked myself on a one day course at Tiggywinkles wildlife hospital next month. It is a wildlife first aid workshop. It sounds really interesting, I'm always rescuing things but I'm not always sure what I'm doing and some handling techniques that could stop me getting bitten and scratched would be extremely useful. Everyone taking part must have a current tetanus jab, mine is certainly kept up to date with all the minor injuries I incur. Just yesterday I managed to walk into a stone bird bath and bash both my knees and then I got my finger caught in the exercise bike in the gym!

I am continuing with my plan to focus on non plant eating bugs and have sold off and in some cases given away a lot of my surplus stock. I have a super collection of tarantulas and scorpions now so fingers crossed that I can do more breeding. Just this week one of my Asian Forest scorpions has produced a multitude of tiny, white babies. They are all over her back and look so cute. I also have a lot of baby millipedes coming along. The only trouble with millipedes is that the babies are tiny and take a fair amount of time until they become properly visible. I was hoping to find some true spiders at the BTS show but this was an area that was sadly lacking. I managed to find a couple of Funnel Web spiders, they are fascinating creatures but they do freak me out a little. I'm not really that bothered about bites and scratches but I'm not at all keen on being injected with venom and I am told that their venom is quite nasty. It is a shame that there don't seem to be any Jumping spiders around at the moment. I love them, they are super cute and really interactive. I spent ages photographing a Jumping spider out in Cyprus, it was big for a Jumping spider but it was extremely well camouflaged against the wall that it was on so the photos don't do it justice.

My new BT Guardian phone is all set up and I think I am getting the hang of it. Anything that stops the deluge of junk calls has to be a good idea. Unfortunately though, I seem to be plagued on my iPhone too, I have been making a point of blocking all the numbers from "courtesy calls" (as they like to call them).

One thing I did notice at the BTS show was the high price of adult spiders, many were much more expensive than mine. It made me think again how nice it would be to have somewhere to sell my most beautiful specimens. There is often no comparison between a wild caught and a captive bred spider and it's just a shame that I can't show that on a computer screen. I was talking to a friend this week who is hoping to find a premises where she can sell her crafts from. We were discussing the idea of whether I could bring along a display of selected tarantulas maybe once a week or even once a month. I am also considering having a purely 'spider day' here once a month or so. The trouble is I don't want to give up my Saturdays and nobody turns up (especially now that my husband's job means he is off at weekends). Perhaps it is worth a try? Of course most of my customers are too far away to just pop in. Perhaps I will set up a 'spider of the week' on Facebook? I am getting a bit better (just a little bit).

I really do get a large number of email enquiries these days and they take up a lot of my time. I'm quite happy about relevant questions but many have little to do with me and I always feel compelled to answer. I so wish people would pick up the phone and call but I suppose it is much easier to just type a message (usually on a phone!). It is very difficult to convey emotion in an email and I have on occasion found that offence can be taken on both sides when no offence was meant. I realise that the internet is full of conflicting advice and I may not have the answer but I will always try. If you would like advice on any of my animals or their care please just call me.

I hope everyone has a good bank holiday weekend and some sun would be an added bonus!