Long overdue for another blog post but life just seems to get busier and busier.

Long overdue for another blog post but life just seems to get busier and busier.

It’s the time of year when the bugs are breeding and the garden is growing. I often say that my job is like being a gardener, I spend ages potting up baby bugs and am constantly cleaning boxes, tanks and various equipment. I have lots of little praying mantis and need to feed them fruit flies every couple of days. It is such a time- consuming job when I have to use a pooter to move the flies from a net cage into each little pot. Obviously praying mantis, like most of my spiders and scorpions, have to be housed separately or I will eventually end up with one big fat one! Praying mantis are voracious feeders.

A few weeks ago, I brought a large collection of arachnids. It has been a lot of work but I am just about getting on top of it all now. You might have read on my Facebook page about me deciding to sacrifice a large part of my office so that we could move the wall and therefore create a lot more space in my bug room. Well, as you know I am always full of good ideas but some work and some don’t. I would love to have more space to work in the bug room but logistically, it was too complicated. It is still a possibility but I realised that I couldn’t possibly go through all the upheaval at this time of year.

I really do have tarantulas everywhere, every shelf is full at the moment but I also have a fair number of stick insects. Many of these creatures are not showing on my website as I want to get them breeding. My millipedes are going well, I have tiny babies now of several species. They need to grow a bit before I can put them on my site.

I recently acquired a male Mexican Red Knee, he came with the name Hermundo (which I love) and he’s an absolute star. He has mated with all three of my female Red Knees. As I’m always saying “in my opinion the Mexican Red Knee is the original and best pet tarantula “.

Quite a few people were concerned when they read my last blog entry. I greatly appreciated the support because I did feel victimised at the time and I was upset. I did as ever win the PayPal dispute and just a few days ago I received written confirmation that my complaint about the council licensing officer has been upheld. I could bore you with the details but having now spoken to his manager, I received an apology and no doubt he will be receiving some words of wisdom and guidance on how not to cause such offence in the future. I do still feel that I have received a secondhand apology and it would have been good to speak to the officer himself but onwards and upwards, keyboard warriors are never that way inclined.

I am once again taking part in the annual reptile survey at a common not too far away from me (but secret). Searching for reptiles really was a labour of love on Easter Sunday as I felt very unwell over Easter and had to drag myself out of my sickbed to check the ground sheets. My wonderful hubby helped of course, after all that effort we only saw one slowworm and one common lizard. It would have been worth the effort to see a snake! There are a fair number of Adders on the common so fingers crossed for our visit next weekend. Adders seem to be getting a very bad press at the moment, there’s a lot of mis-information on social media. I love snakes, especially seeing them in the wild.

We have finally booked a holiday for the summer (after three long years of not going abroad). We are off to Cyprus, to the lovely little family run hotel in the Akamas region (nature area), that we have visited several times before. I can’t wait and hopefully we will once again see the beautiful black Whip snakes. We may also see Blunt Nosed vipers, they are lovely but a bit scary. They seem to have little angry faces and are of course quite venomous. I managed to stumble across a pair on our last trip when I was wearing just flipflops on my feet. It was early in the morning and they just looked at me but I will be more aware and careful this time. I would never live it down if I were to get bitten by a snake! My aim is just to observe without disturbing them and hopefully get a photo or two.

That’s it, I had better get back to the bugs. I’m still not feeling too great but I did 3 tests over the Easter period and they came back negative so at least I don’t have Covid (again). It was a real effort to feed all my spiders this week, I seriously need to sell some! I will be adding more tarantulas to the “super spider special offers” page on my site in the next few days.

Enjoy the sunshine, gardens, parks, seaside (if you are lucky enough to be near one) and look out for our beautiful British bugs. I have seen some lovely butterflies recently, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Orange Tip and Brimstone. It takes me back to the good old days when I worked at the London Butterfly House J