Date: 22 July 2017

Location: Edinburgh’s Butterfly and Insect World

Before going to Russia we had arranged with the family a visit to Edinburgh’s Butterfly and Insect World. Our party included myself (Sog) as well as Wosog, Gsog (grandson of Groucho), Gdog (granddaughter of Groucho) and Silosog (my son-in-law). Apart from Silosog, we are all keen photographers, and this was the main motivation for the visit.

We picked up Gsog in Glasgow then started our sat nav-directed journey to Edinburgh. I have an almost prodigious ability to take wrong turnings, even with the aid of sat nav, and I had never been to Butterfly World before. It seemed to me that the machine was taking us by a very circuitous route, and this plus the steadily worsening weather made the drive to Edinburgh somewhat stressful.

Butterfly World is part of what must be the biggest garden centre in the World! Gdog and Silosog had already arrived before us. There is a fair sized restaurant in the garden centre, and that is where Wosog, Gsog and I headed before entering the small, humid World of the Butterflies and Insects. The place was made even more humid by the presence of a significant number of humans, many of the small and noisy variety, but there were quite a few critters worth viewing and photographing. It seems the world of butterflies and insects also contains turtles, a number of birds, lizards, spiders and snakes. Some of the butterflies seem quite tame and both Gdog and Gsog had a butterfly hitchhiker attached to their bags for quite some time. At 15.00 there was a session where some of the enthusiastic young staff give us some critter information and then supervised handling of the said critters.

The first beasties to be handled (not be me) were a centipede and a millipede. These were followed by a number of small snakes and, finally, some tarantulas. I was suprised to find that Gdog, Silosog and, amazingly, Wosog volunteered for the tarantula handling. I’ve actually only got their words for this: I’m awaiting photographic evidence. The reason I was so surprised in Wosog’s case is the fact that she demands instant destruction of any much smaller spiders that are discovered in our house.

Uncategorized family wosog