Virginia Cheeseman Blog

I had a rare day off on Wednesday and went to Whipsnade zoo with my nephew's family. It was a lovely day, pouring with rain in the morning but when we arrived at lunch time (got stuck on the M25) the sun had come out and the afternoon was beautiful. I have never been to Whipsnade before, I had no idea it was so big. It is more of a safari park than a zoo, we took the car in and drove from exhibit to exhibit. I loved the fact that the animals had so much space and some were even allowed to roam free. We mingled with wallabies, deer and mara. The Discovery centre had a good range of bugs and spiders, plus stunning reptiles. Sadly we missed the 'meet the bugs show', I was out voted by three kids who wanted to stay longer at the play area! I know I have been asking people to call with questions rather than keep emailing me but honestly I cannot believe how many calls I had on Wednesday (not a moan, just an observation). The phones have been really busy all week due to half te...

I thought last week was busy! This week has been incredible. I decided to buy in lots of new stock before the half term week and before the weather becomes too bad. It seemed like a good plan but in reality I have over done it a bit. I have spent every morning packing up and posting out orders, every afternoon housing and feeding both old and new animals and every evening doing emails and paperwork. I do intend to take a little time for me next week and get out and about with the family (well that's the plan). Everything seems to be going well in the bug house, considering how many new creatures I have, I actually feel quite organised. Thanks to my endless lists I know exactly what has been fed and tended to this week and those that will have to be done over the weekend. I always mean to have the feeding finished by Saturday but I rarely do. I have some super new stick insects arriving this evening. I visited the local Homebase car park yesterday to stock up on bramble. Unfortunate...

A very busy week, lots of orders coming in and things to do. The weather is steadily getting colder, I will soon be using heat packs in my parcels. The post has been really reliable lately, I have had no delayed parcels reported to me for ages (if you don't count the parcel that I sent to Finland recently, goodness knows how but it was delivered to New Zealand and the poor guy is still trying to get it back!). I have sold quite a few of the spiders and bugs that I purchased from the AES show, so now I am ordering in lots of new stock, it should arrive over the next couple of weeks. I will then be well stocked for Christmas, which is approaching fast. I was sent a beautiful book this week, at first I thought it was a competition win but then I realised that it was the new book from Dorling Kindersley and it had been sent to me as I provided a Jungle Nymph stick insect to be photographed. The book is called 'The Natural History Book'(the ultimate visual guide to everything o...

The bug show was great at Kempton Park last Saturday. I was trying to work out how many years I have been attending the AES show and it is an awful lot! It is always nice to catch up with people year after year and also meet customers that I have only spoken to on the phone or communicated with by email. I took an extensive shopping list with me and purchased a huge amount of new stock. I tried to stick to mostly arachnids because that is undoubtedly what I sell primarily these days. I did get a few new stick insects and even some praying mantids. I know I said I was giving them up but I haven't seen any Cryptic mantids for ages and I am especially fond of them. I remember first seeing them at London Zoo and I thought they were beautiful. They seem to be fine kept as a colony which is most unusual for mantids. I checked on them yesterday and they looked very happy and healthy. Obviously my week has been taken up with housing, feeding, labelling and the incredibly time consuming job...

Happy birthday to my website. It's a new month today and a new year for my bug business. I would say that I can't believe it is a whole year since my 'new' automated website went live but it actually seems much longer! I really hate change but so often when I take the leap it leaves me feeling 'how on earth did I manage before'. I don't know how I ever coped with taking credit card orders over the phone. It was fraught with problems, I would write down a wrong digit, the customer would read something incorrectly and then quite regularly I would ring up for authorisation only for it to be refused. There was also the responsibility of storing everyone's card details. Some bits of information were kept on my computer files but expiry dates etc. were written on a piece of paper and locked away in my office safe (if you are thinking of breaking in for a spot of burglary at this point there is nothing in the safe now, all card details were destroyed and with a...

Never enough room in my bug house, I have been having a sort out and trying to make some space. This week hasn't been as hectic as last week so I have been rearranging the boxes and tanks and trying to get some sense of order so that the feeding and cleaning regime is a little simpler. I do of course have my famous 'tick list' so that nothing gets left out. I have lists for everything, I wouldn't know what to do with myself without my daily lists. The Indonesian centipede eggs have hatched but rather disappointingly there were only a dozen babies. I thought they generally had a lot more than that? They are large, healthy babies and seem to be eating ok, their heads are bright blue. I have separated them into individual pots, having never bred them before I am not sure how cannibalistic they are. They may be fine together but I didn't want to risk it. Spiderlings are often fine together until they start moulting but newly hatched praying mantids can be very cannibal...

Spiders, spiders everywhere - I have had a delivery of spiders almost every day this week and I now have a bug house full of them. I had a large number come in yesterday afternoon, they have all been housed and fed but I haven't had time to enter their details on the website yet. I think it will be pretty busy today. I generally spend time on Fridays catching up with paperwork because there is no posting to do before the weekend. As I sit here now looking out onto my lovely garden (I think it's lovely) and the sun is shining I want to get out there but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I haven't checked the weather forecast but it will probably be raining. It has been another hectic week, my husband was away with work, I have managed to add several jobs to his 'to do list' in his absence. Sadly it looks like he will be spending a second weekend trying to fix our daughter's, boyfriend's car. It needs repairing as it is conked out on our drive at the momen...

Back from holiday for one week but it's been a very long week. I think I need another holiday now. I have caught up on all emails and correspondence, posted out everything that was ordered while I was away and placed orders for a great deal of new stock. Yesterday I received several species of spiders, scorpions, millipedes etc and next week I have even more coming in. My husband has had the last couple of days off work and has been constantly making up little spider houses. The volume of email enquiries that I receive is getting a bit out of hand. Many of them are queries that are answered on either my FAQ page or terms page. Many are simply too complicated to answer in an email but are very quickly dealt with on the phone. I have been trying to persuade people to call with their enquiries but it is an uphill struggle. It seems that people who don't suffer from arachnophobia commonly suffer with phone-phobia (I'm sure there is a name for it, another thing to Google). Some ...

I'm back from sunny Rhodes and very pleased to see that it is still sunny and quite warm in the UK. The holiday was lovely, not the most relaxing with 8 children under 8 in our family party of 20 but great fun. I did a lot of bug hunting with the kids, we went out around the hotel and surrounding areas with our torches most evenings (my evening bag will never be the same again with half a dozen torches stuffed into it). We found several praying mantids, I'm not sure of the species but the males were much smaller than the females (I will do a Google search later). We found various grasshoppers, bugs, crickets and some beautiful Swallowtail butterflies, plus there were lots of Humming Bird hawk moths around the flower pots in the hotel. I tried to take some photos but they certainly move fast as they dart from one flower to the next. We also saw lots of lizards but sadly no snakes. My hubby and I hired a car for three days and went out on regular 'snake hunts', we walked ...

An extremely sad week, on Monday I had to say goodbye to my beautiful Akita dog Luka. She was almost 11 years old and she had been my constant companion for all those years. She was a difficult dog but she was my 'teddy bear' and I loved her dearly. I have been trying to carry on as usual but it has been a real struggle for the last few days. On a much happier note sales have been good and it is only one week until our summer holiday. My automated website wasn't in existence last year so I have been undecided whether the site should be switched off while I'm away or left to run. I have decided to leave it on but I will be putting a lot of prices up and removing most of the special offers while I'm not here. Nobody will be manning the site so I will have to sort everything out when I get back. I have no way of knowing how busy things will be or how many orders and enquiries will await me. My main priority when I return will be to feed and clean all the spiders and b...