Survived Without IT Support
Well I survived the week without my IT support (husband). Thankfully I didn't have any problems with the computer and he will be back tomorrow. It's been a very busy week. I had a lot of new spiders come in on Monday, from a breeder in Europe and I have ordered yet more spiders for next week. They should arrive mid week and there will be several different species. I also had some mantids arrive in the post and one of my egg cases hatched yesterday. The Orchid mantids are quite small but already they look beautiful with their pale pink and white, petal shaped body and legs. They are happily devouring crickets up to half their body size.
I have certainly spent a fair amount of time housing and feeding all my bugs this week (yes, even more than usual). It's a lovely time of year, everything seems to be having babies. I noticed that one of my Giant Crab spiders is running around with an egg sac today and yesterday I saw that one of my Cameroon Baboon tarantulas has laid an egg sac. I was really pleased to see that the mating had been successful. I still have the male, I will put him with my other female and see what happens. I wasn't sure that the females were fully mature but obviously they are! The Blue Tits in our camera nesting box are growing bigger and bigger. The poor mum and dad seem to be constantly feeding them all day long. I love watching them on my computer but I can't leave the program on for too long as it keeps crashing. Evidently my computer doesn't have enough memory.
My wildlife pond is looking good, it has been set up for a few weeks now so I think I may release the newts that I collected from my sister's garden into it this weekend. I hope they will stick around, newts are just so cute. They will probably wander off into the woods behind us but I have made a nice damp area for them. I haven't needed to water it this week with all the rain that we've had!
I have now sold the six Goliath Birdeaters that I purchased at a recent show. They were only spiderlings and ridiculously expensive but I wish I had bought more of them. I sold them as 'collection only or posted at your own risk', only one was collected but I'm pleased to say that the other five travelled through the post with no problems.
I have another open afternoon planned for next week on Saturday 20 th June. Hopefully it will be well attended, several people have said that they will try and make it so it looks like being a success again. The weather was beautiful last time, I hope we are as lucky again.
My great idea of sending bugs to Europe isn't going well at the moment. I've had loads of email enquiries, taking up lots of time but no actual orders. I will see how things go in the next few weeks.