The flood! I could have done with an Ark to rescue my bugs last Saturday. After a huge storm during Friday night I discovered in the morning that my bug room was awash. If you are a regular reader of my blog you may recall that this has happened before but not to this extent! Basically, the flat roof on my office and bug room has a drainage gully running along the middle, a ridiculous design but unless we could afford to knock it down and start again (which we can't) we just have to cope with it. The storm washed moss from the roof of our house into the gully, it overflowed and poured into my bug room and thankfully to a lesser extent, my office too. In real terms it could have been a lot worse. The crickets were all drowned as they were in plastic boxes and several containers of beetle larvae, cockroaches and stick insects were pretty wet but it was mostly equipment that was ruined and had to be thrown away. I am still trying to dry out the floor now.
On a brighter note, it has been a good week for orders. The bugs are generally flourishing and breeding and I think I have done pretty well with my Facebook and Instagram. I am slowly joining the 21st century. I think I am now on top of my Facebook messages and I have done several posts this week. I got a bit confused with Instagram, I assume I can't put more than one photo on at a time? I wanted to show the very obvious eggs that my lovely Whip-Tail scorpion is carrying but the only photo that appeared was of the adult pair on a piece of wood. I call them Joyce and Fred after my wonderful next door neighbours who sadly passed away last year. They were inseparable as are my Whip scorpions, they always sit together. Whip scorpions are such fascinating and beautiful animals (despite what my husband thinks).
I am taking some spiders and scorpions to our local youth club on Monday. We have been working up to the arachnids over the last few weeks and Monday is the last meeting until September. Unfortunately my star tarantula Lily, the Mexican Red Knee, is just about to moult (I took a photo of her this morning and will post it on Facebook when I get a minute). I think it is very unlikely that she will be able to come along on Monday. I have been checking her every day but she is hiding away with a very dark looking abdomen. Moulting is clearly imminent and I actually think it will be this weekend but I can't take her along until her new skin has hardened up. She is such a lovely, gentle spider. I do have a Chile Rose but she is boring in comparison. I will take my beautiful Pink Toe, she is quite happy to be handled but I don't want to cause a riot if she decides to bolt for it and arboreal spiders do tend to do that. I have got some lovely scorpions to take along but I did tell the kids (young persons) that it was more looking than handling this week!
I am writing this blog a day early again as I am taking my sister out for the day tomorrow. I am trying to get better organised with everything and make time for friends and family rather than trying to do it all at once and feeling completely overwhelmed by never have time for anything. I enjoyed having a 'sort of' day off on Sunday and I am going to try and stick with it. Posting on just Tuesdays and Thursdays isn't going too well, every week something seems to crop up and I end up posting on Mondays as well so perhaps that's what I should stick with. I do like to plan, I'm just not a 'go with the flow' sort of person. Just looked at the clock, I must finish this soon as I have to get off to the school to pick up my great-nieces who I have on Thursdays. Sadly neither of them likes bugs but I can't wait to show them my bat detector. After going on the bat and glow worm walk last week (we saw bats galore but just one glow worm) I decided I had to have my own detector and it arrived yesterday. I waited for dusk and then went out onto our decking, I couldn't believe it when I turned it on and heard "click, click, click", I looked up and saw a tiny bat flying around our pond! Different bats are located at different frequencies, I had it set at 50kHz for Pipistrelles so I guess that's what it was, how exciting. Who needs a metal detector when you could have a bat detector!
I did have more to say but it will have to wait until next week. What was I saying about time :>)
News Flash - Lily is now moulting, see Facebook for photos
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