Happy New Year everyone!

Happy New Year everyone! Last year was a terrible year for my family so I'm going with the resolution "new year - new start" and hoping to goodness that this year will be better. We spent the New Year in Luxembourg with my niece's family who live out there and family from the UK including my sister's 10 grandchildren. It was lovely to all be together but Luxembourg is way too cold for me! (it is now only 74 days until Spring – I wish I could use Emoji’s in my blog, this certainly warrants a sad face!)

Our daughter looked after the bugs and pets as usual but she has now moved into her own place with a friend. Thankfully it is close by so she can still look after everything, if not I would never be able to go away again with all my animals.

Everything was fine upon our return but the morning that we left for Luxembourg I was having a breakdown when I discovered that the power to the bug room was off! Thankfully my hubby managed to get it sorted. Re-wiring the bug room has been on his ‘to do list’ for over a year. At least a couple of the heaters and main radiator were plugged into the house circuit. It turned out the power had been off for several hours. Headless chicken springs to mind, I was running around shouting that we couldn’t go if it wasn’t sorted! Thankfully, all was fine while we were away and I am now confident that he will re-wire as soon as the weather warms up.

Not a lot to report from the bug room. I have zillions of millipedes, I think I have cracked the millipede breeding, perhaps I will get to grips with scorpion breeding in 2017. I actually think that many of these little creatures have set breeding times and need to experience the seasons to reproduce. This isn’t something that I can easy replicate in my room but I’m doing my best. I have lots of large fruit beetle larvae so I expect they will start pupating soon and then hatch into bright and beautiful adults. If I could I would love to try the really giant fruit beetles but they are expensive to purchase and then need a lot more time and space than I have available (I will put it on my list of things to do when I win the lottery and am a lady of leisure). I haven’t written a blog for a few weeks but of course I email, message and text all the time. I now realise that I generally use a lot of Emoji’s and I feel a bit adrift without them (that’s another sad face).

I will be restocking plenty of bugs towards the end of this month but I am going to be a lot more careful of what I choose to keep. I do need to sort my life out, when I wasn’t well last year it was incredibly difficult to look after all the animals. I have a lot of family and friends who are extremely willing but equally useless when it comes to creepy crawlies and specifically tarantulas. Scorpions aren’t too bad because they don’t jump out as soon as you lift the lid on their box but tarantulas are another matter! Trying to feed all the spiders after my operation was a trial that I won’t forget for a long time. When we were in Luxembourg a mug slipped out of my hand. I knew it was a ‘special’ mug and my brain seemed to switch to spider mode ‘grab it quick or it will be gone’. Everyone was amazed that although the mug flew through the air, swirling around, I managed to grab it and replace it on the breakfast bar without even spilling the tea left in it. I guess it’s all those years of practice but it is also how I have managed to get bitten once or twice. Sometimes it may be better to let it go.

I had a photographer come over just before Christmas to take photos of kids and bugs for an article being written about me and my new venture of “Ginny’s Jungle” parties/animal encounters. It is a local magazine, I think it will be appearing in the February/March edition so let’s hope I get some parties booked soon. I invited a child minder friend around after school but didn’t realise quite how many children she collected from school that day. I chose a Thursday as it is the day I collect my nephew’s girls. It was fun but utter chaos, there were kids everywhere and most were hiding out in the back room watching telly with the door firmly shut. My friend’s son and daughter are very keen on bugs, they are an animal mad family and always ready to help with my Ginny’s Jungle publicity.

I think the wasps have finally died off in our garden shed. I had a look yesterday and everything seemed pretty damp and deserted. I’m going to bring the nest indoors this weekend and I need to find a way of preserving it. I’m thinking of spraying it with hair spray. Do you have any better ideas? I have a couple of good friends who run craft workshops so perhaps I should give them a call. It is far too amazing to just leave to rot or even worse throw away. It is really beautiful. The wasps have however made a total mess of the shed, I will clear it up in the Spring (if I put this job on hubby’s list he will not be happy as it was entirely my idea to give the shed over to the huge wasp colony for the summer)

Well that’s it, better get a move on, I need to measure my snails and update the website with the new sizes. They eat me out of house and home but giant snails certainly grow quickly, they are very cute and popular with kids.