Christmas Bah Humbug!

Christmas Bah Humbug! The run up to Christmas is great for kids but damn hard work for adults (dare I say it? Especially women!). I did my second Ginny’s Jungle practice party on Wednesday and it went really well. I learnt a lot from the first party and put it into practice, and again at this party I tried a few different things to see what worked best. I still need to do a group party before I launch my new business for real (i.e. I start charging). My god-daughter informs me that she is moving up to Brownies in the New year so it will probably be the Brownies then. 

The bugs are going down slowly but hopefully once Christmas is over I can shift a lot more and then have some time to do the work needed for my new venture. It is crazy the amount of time that the bug care takes on a daily basis. I spent ages this week individually housing up my tiny desert scorpion babies. I noticed that some of the babies were looking considerably fatter than others. They may have been full of crickets but I didn’t want to face the prospect of opening the box and finding that they had been munching on their siblings. The Asian Forest scorpions always seem fine together, I don’t think I have ever seen any cannibalism with them and the Rock scorpion babies are doing ok together. I separated some of my Shiny Burrowing babies some time ago but the ones that I left together seem fine too. However, I did leave my other desert species together not so long ago and I learnt my lesson when I opened the box on feeding day and literally found one very rotund baby scorpion. These are the Vaejovis species, they are such active little things, they never seem to stay still. I think they are really cute.

“I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” has finally finished. I didn’t watch it every night but I saw quite a bit of it and I did watch the final when the girl ate the ‘live’ spider. There has been such an outcry over it and the idea is absolutely horrible but also ridiculous as it was quite clearly dead! Am I the only one who could see that? Certainly everyone has been telling me it was alive, I agree it was certainly alive when we saw it at the beginning but it looked like it had been cooked by the time she came to eat it.

I’m really pleased with the interaction that has been going on with my website recently. I have comments on the blog and lots of people emailing me ideas about which lizard I should choose for my parties. I have finally decided and it has to be the trusty Bearded Dragon! I know I said they were boring but I have never kept one and it seems that they really fit the bill. I need a friendly, non biting, captive bred animal but I also need a lizard that likes to eat crickets. I now buy most of my crickets from Pets at Home and these are usually the amazingly agile Banded crickets. I generally end up with 1 or 2 in the spider box and 6 on the floor! Having a Bearded Dragon to search the floor and eat them sounds like a bonus to me. The real clincher was when a reptile friend told me yesterday that they love to eat spiders. I’ve said it before I spend ages caring for giant spiders and then ages trying to rid my bug room of little British spiders that have come in with the food plants. Once they get into the warm room they breed in every nook and cranny and drive me nuts. I suppose a Bearded Dragon in the lizard keeping world is like the Mexican Red Knee, the original and still by far the best pet tarantula (in my opinion). I did look at the Blue Tongued skink, several people have suggested one but I don’t think it would help with my cricket problem and I do recall the one that we had at the London Butterfly House many years ago was very sluggish. I do like active animals (that’s how we ended up with such a lunatic dog). It has been suggested that I am hyperactive myself but I’ve been called worse. 

Ok as usual I am running out of time. My next posting day will be Tuesday as I am up in London all day Monday. I am seriously thinking about changing my posting days in the New Year to Tuesday and Thursday, rather than Monday and Thursday. Posting orders on a Monday means I have to get everything ready on a Sunday and it isn’t fair on my family when they only have the weekend to relax and it isn’t very relaxing when I am always working (so my husband tells me). Anyway better get a move on, Friday is out and about day and I have a lot of out and abouting to do with Christmas fast approaching.