Bugs, bugs everywhere!

Bugs, bugs everywhere! The BTS (British Tarantula Society) annual exhibition last weekend was great fun, lots to see, lots to buy and lots of people to meet. I went bonkers again and bought a huge number of spiders, scorpions, millipedes, beetles, assassin bugs, caterpillars – yes way too much of everything. All I need to do now is sell some animals to make some room, I have really focussed on getting the new stock housed, fed, labelled, entered onto my stock lists and last but not least the website. If it’s not on the website, it won’t be going anywhere. I found this out the week before last. I was wondering why my beautiful Giant Lime Green stick insects (Diapherodes gigantica) weren’t selling and then found to my annoyance that I had never uploaded them to the site!

I ‘may’ have made a mistake with the beautiful rainbow coloured, Giant Pill millipedes. My hubby said I was like a kid in a toy shop, I certainly was blown away by their beauty, excitement took over and I purchased ten. I’m sure you can imagine that they weren’t cheap and if you look at my Facebook post you will see several comments telling me that they are impossible to keep alive. I have spoken to a few people on the subject this week but all I can do is my best and I will certainly do my best to keep them going and my aim as always is to breed them! Time will tell, at the moment they seem fine. I did try hard to stick to my now famous shopping list and not get too side tracked, other than the Pill millipedes I don’t think I bought anything too daft. I did get a few Avicularia spiderlings, they are always difficult to rear but so pretty if you can get them going. Sadly, I have already lost one. I was trying to keep the container sterile as they don’t like stale conditions but the poor little thing dried out a little too much (that’s all I can think it was?).

I do wish that the academics would stop changing the scientific names of tarantulas. It’s bad enough that the common names differ so much but I’m now told that most Avicularia spiders have been reclassified as Caribena. I am only just getting used to the good old Mexican Red Knee, always known as Brachypelma smithi, now being called Brachypelma hamorii.

The dreaded GDPR privacy law comes into effect today, I predict chaos for so many companies. I have been flooded with emails asking me to give permission to remain on their mailing list. Many of you will know that my hobby is entering competitions and I am therefore on just about everyone’s mailing list (well it feels like everyone’s). I don’t know what it will all mean but it is costing people who run a business an awful lot of time and money. Hopefully, my website guy, Super Simon is taking care of it for me. Anyone who does not comply with the new law is threatened with huge fines. Will companies still be able to send out newsletters and information by email or post, will junk mail stop? I think quite a lot will, but of course plenty of junk mail comes from overseas so there’s no reason for that to change. I hope it won’t cause problems for the promoters of competitions. Over the years I have won some amazing prizes, holidays (including 3 cruises), household goods, tickets to events, weekends away, spa breaks, clothing, toys and the list goes on …….

I could keep going with the blog but I need to speed up as I have a lot on at the moment. It is that time again when half my family seem to have birthdays over a few days. It was my big sister’s ‘big’ birthday on Sunday so I felt very guilty going to the tarantula show but we did manage to quickly unload the car and put all the new animals in my bug room, before setting off for the evening barbeque. Then Monday was my great-niece’s birthday, Wednesday my daughter’s and on Sunday my mother in-laws. I certainly need to get in the gym this bank holiday weekend, to work off all that cake!

I will just have a little moan here, well I do call this blog my “weekly whinge”, I don’t have the time or the inclination to go into all the details but just yesterday another ‘gentleman’ for want of a better word decided he wasn’t happy with his order and put in a claim to PayPal, I am absolutely sick of it. These people are literally just looking for trouble. In all honesty it doesn’t happen very often but it is so unfair. I know I should let it go but it’s the principle so again I will need to jump through many hoops to win back the money that was rightfully mine! My daughter constantly tells me it’s the modern world and I’m sure she is right but it is horrible. Keyboard warriors are so rude these days, they think they are invisible, spitting bile from their bedrooms. Bring on the cyber police, that’s what I say! I had several conversations on this topic at the tarantula show, they are almost always “angry young men with little power in their lives”, they would never behave this way face to face. Hopefully Super Simon will sort out the Emoji compatibility problem when he has finished all this GDPR stuff. I need an angry face here! That said I do realise that it isn’t personal to me and that most of my customers are absolutely lovely. I have received lots of great reviews this month, I will be doing the competition draw in a few days and I may award two prizes this month (just imagine a smiley face here!). I did buy Simon a baby Theraphosa blondi at the show, I thought he deserved a treat for all his hard work (mind you I didn’t realise how expensive they were, he/she cost me more than any of the spiders on my website!).

Finish on a favour – it is very difficult to proof read your own work and there is so much information on my site that I’ve got a bit lost. I know there are care notes missing on some species and there must be spelling mistakes and ‘cut & paste’ mistakes. If you find any please let me know, it is really helpful! Just yesterday I realised that I had cut and pasted some information from one Isopod species to another and although the new name was correct in one place the old name was still showing in another.

This week’s photo: The Giant Rainbow Pill millipedes of course.