Leezard-Bloggery
“A blog is an ideal way of doing a brain dump on a daily basis of what is going on right now, the weird, the exciting and the awful things ... I also wanted to have a record for myself, just for posterity.” ~David Adams
June 25, 2010
This entry brought to you by concern, frustration and forehead-slapping tendencies...
We leave for a family reunion on Wednesday next week, and I haven't given much thought to it as I've been concentrating on my week of catch up. While this project is going incredibly well, since we had to do a two-room haul over and move a lot of things around, I can't wait to get it finished and move onto the next project. Call me impatient, but I've been behind for way too long....
Dave asked me what we're going to do with the animals today, and since we're taking the dogs the rest was pretty easy. We'll just give the cats their five-day feeder, top up everyone's waters and worm dishes, and they'll be fine for a couple of days. A friend can likely pop in and check water and such. Right?
Ha. I'm glad I've got him around. All he needed to ask was "what about the veggie eaters?"
Oh. Right. And considering I have a couple of baby uromastyx, one of which isn't doing so hot, I can't exactly leave them with nothing for those five days. Not to mention the two geckos that I'm hand-feeding slurry to every night, because the buggers just refuse to eat for some reason. Well, I guess I'd better start thinking this through.
I figured I'd bring the baby leo with me, as I'm just not ready to give up on it yet, and it needs food on a daily basis, and then I remembered the adult AFT. Ok, whatever, I can bring both. And then I remembered the uro whose health is currently questionable, and became stumped -- that one will be much harder to maintain heat and house than the other...
And that's when I realized that I'm feeling house-bound. That's not typically a worry, except leaving for BC for five days has suddenly become much harder to do. While I know that they will all be taken care of, there's also my eggs, two of which should be ready to hatch any day, and the geckos who are still laying eggs. I'd really love to see the rest of the family, but I'm struggling with how to balance it all. Things have been getting busier, and I'm just not sure I'm ready to leave it all behind for a few days.... I'm sure I will eventually, but probably not until I have found a better routine.
How to break that to Dave, and then the rest of the family. Hopefully they'll understand, as many of them are also business owners.
On a completely different topic, one of my customers gave me some of the mantids that she hatched out earlier this spring. Well, color me absolutely pickled! I cannot thank Tracy enough, as praying mantids have always been a subject of fascination for me. They are, so far, relatively easy to care for and a whole lot of fun to watch, and their jumping skills far exceeded my expectations! I have to separate them, though, as keeping tabs on 20 or so little buggies while dumping fruit flies in for them is really, really awkward....
June 17, 2010
Many people make comments about all of the free time I must have, and I can't help myself but laugh.
While I have to admit that being self-employed is a bonus I never thought I'd enjoy, the time issue is, and likely always will be, an issue.
Granted, I have the freedom of a flexible schedule for the most part, but there is still that overwhelming sense of "crunch" for time that I've never been able to part with since moving to the Edmonton area (when I was 17 and worked while going to school).
So what DOES the crazy "Bug Lady" do in her spare time?
...
She doesn't really have much for spare time, truth be told. I have to tell myself to take some time, or have her husband encourage me to watch a movie with him, but even then he'll glare at me when I bring the laptop to work on at the same time. The website is an amazing tool, but takes a lot of upkeep in order to update on a regular basis. But then, of course, there's having to set up new pages and type everything out, take pictures, play with placement, upload the new pages, work out the bugs....
And that's just the webpage....
Ever since the ERAS spring show and sale, I've been behind. I've been bringing home more animals to concentrate on specific breeding and, while doing this, I've had to re-arrange other animals and cages to accomodate the new guys. And then there's weighing them in, naming them, making sure they're eating, regular check ins, cleaning, etc etc etc. The house, during the show, turned upside down as I was not able to be home to clean it regularly, and I've been struggling ever since to catch up on it all. While I love my husband with all of my heart, he is not very good at the house cleaning, and his standards of clean are definitely much lower than my own. I'll admit that this has created some small level of chaos between us, but I also know that my level of "clean" can be pretty anal retentive to some people. I don't mind this, though -- I'm proud of my house and home, and everything surrounding it, and my cleanliness is part of that pride. I absolutely love coming home to a clean house that smells nice, and I can sit back and have nothing to do.
Granted, there's NEVER "nothing" to do.
Today, however, I can finally say that I have caught up with much of my housecleaning. The main floor is clean! There's some organizing to do in my office, but there's a huge haul-over happening in there, so that's to be expected. It's CLEAN, but needs a few more changes as I move my books downstairs (with only a small amount of tears!) and set up the bookshelves for bug breeding bins. I'm going from a book worm office, to just a worm office. It's a little disturbing to walk into now, as I'm used to so many books and now it's crawly things. That's my life, though! The thing I worry about most is the smell, but for each bug bin I've put a small container of baking soda on the shelves, and so far it works very well. I tend to burn candles while I'm working anyways, so I think this will work. For now. We'll see what happens when I start growing silk worms....
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which looks like it will start next week. I'm not looking forward to the smell, which is almost sickly-sweet, but if I can control that then it will help make things move along, and I can increase my knowledge base on them. I've done a ton of reading in the last while, and it looks reasonable and possibly easy to do. The biggest challenge, I think, will be the food, but depending on the cost of raising these things, I think the possibilities are endless. Here's hoping!
I've also ordered a bag of starter "red worms". They are smaller than dew worms and have very similar nutritional values, and much, much more prolific. Not to mention the compost and casting benefits.... which is a bonus for me, since I have so many plants that I'm sure will love the fertilizer!
And for something completely different, I'm expecting an order of dermestid beetles next week. Not for feeders, though! These bugs are responsible for cleaning the bones people can sometimes find of dead animals. Why would I do this? Preserving skeletons is a hobby that I've always been intersted in, but never the know-how. They are a fascinating educational tool that I love looking at, and although some people find this a little strange and creepy, they find me to be the same when they hear of my hobbies. So, may as well live up to that! It will take a little while to get a good colony going, but I'm excited for the possibilities. Considering the frozen beasts in my freezer, I think I'll experiment with a couple of mice and/or rats and see what comes out of it.
June 5, 2010
June is the month I dread. I don't mind the halfway point to Christmas, which means winter once again, but it's the month in which I need a bubble. I've had my series of weird and wacky health issues over the last few years, and the last two Junes mark the onset of two of the biggest ones -- June '08 with the debilitating cat bite while I was working at the local animal shelter which caused a blood and lymph infection that I fought for nearly a year, and then of course last June with my completely freak accident resulting in my leg being retained in the foamy brace of filth (because when you live in it for so long, nothing can feel hygenic anymore!!)
Anyways, so far every day this month I have burned myself. Minor, but hopefully by the end of the month, the accumulation of daily little burns will appease the yearly health demon that seems to be stalking me. I can't afford the time, money or patience for another disaster!
Besides, I am half expecting to have to take some time out from delivering for another surgical repair. I have an MRI on the knee on Monday, which will tell me if my suspicion of torn/non existent ligaments is correct. At least we can plan this time, and hopefully this will mean I won't have to send the iguanas to a friends temporarily again. While I know they didn't mind helping, it was still a huge step for me to ask for help. It's not something I tend to do easily. Especially when it comes to the animals.
Beyond that, Dave and I have taken some huge steps towards some goals lately. We're are totally stoked and excited to be able to bring home several more uromastyx for future breeding. We are now proud owners of 2.1 red saharan uromastyx, 1.1 yellow saharans, 2.2 mali uromastyx and 1.1 sudanese uromastyx, not to mention the single egyptian we are looking for a mate for. One of the saharan pairs will be ready to go in the spring if they put more weight one, as well as both pairs of malis. This is something we've been looking into for awhile, but finding the specimens has not proven to be easy... more often than not, they tend to be improperly sexed or simply malnourished.
While we're still waiting for some ornates and a few others from Doug Dix of Deer Fern Farms this fall, at the moment we're pretty full up. All the new additions are doing great, even though the newest pair are a little slower than the rest to settle in.
The sudanese we received from Troy Jones of Uroranch are doing incredibly well. Despite the rough road they started on with a mistake in shipping, they seem to have adjusted well to their surroundings and are eating more than I could have imagined. They lost weight for the first couple of weeks, which had me worried, but the little beasts are proving hardier than I ever could have imagined, and I am proud both at their survival against the odds, as well as my own confidence with the species. It seems I'm doing something right after all, when I remember people telling me this entire thing would never happen.
Adding all of the uromastyx, however, has stressed out our electrical box. Until Dave has time to update the old one, we have had to run a high end extension cord from the laundry room. I love my old house, but there are definitely some downfalls. The electrical situation is definitely one of them!
The leopard gecko hatchlings are doing mostly well. Three of the four are eating well and becoming more social, however one had an issue with her foot at one point. While the foot issue seems to be clearing up, she has not eaten for me as of yet, and it is starting to show. Hopefully I have some luck getting her to take some slurry tonight to kickstart an appetite.
Yesterday was a shock to start, as I walk in and see eggs in the cornsnake enclosure. The funny part about that story is that the one snake in that closure was sold to me as a guaranteed male. Another funny part of that story is that last year, while "him" and River, his "girlfriend" who was sold to me as a proven female, laid eggs together. While I didn't have any success hatching any of them, there were fully developed babies in the eggs.
Which means that both of my "proven" pair of cornsnakes were sexed wrong. The only downfall in this is that the supposed male, whom I figured was not eating because of breeding season, was not up to weight to carry eggs and is now much thinner than I'd like her to be. Once their last meal is digested, I'm taking out the probes and violating their personal space to make sure this doesn't happen again. Of all frustrating things that have happened since I've started breeding, this is one of the worst.... but thankfully it can be fixed.
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