October 17th marked the annual Amateur Entomology Society's show at Kempton Park Racecourse, this was the first time I had ever attended but felt that a show report would be necessary as when looking up about the event and exactly what takes place I could find no real information.

So here I am, helping all you lovely people find out.
Unfortunately I did not take many pictures, I'll have to make up for those in descriptions.

The show sees a turnout in the thousands, from elderly visitors to very young children you'll find all walks of earth interested in entomology and insects.

So I was very pleased to find that the previous day I was watching the one show on bbc one where this young girl Kiara was showing off her bugs, little did I think it, she was there too! I'd even met her on the train!

Now the one thing I didn't welcome too much with the entomology show was the high proportion of stalls selling dead bugs for the actual sense of term entomology, however to this there were also a lot of people selling live-stock.

There were millipedes, cockroaches, plasmids, hermit-crabs, spiders, scorpions, beetles and even a few stalls selling snails.

Not only was livestock available but there were also many stalls selling very reasonably priced tanks, books, substrate, and much more, in the past I've only been able to go to reptile shows as there are far more that take place, but I must say there was twice as many stalls if not three times as many as you would see at shows like ERAC and PRAS.

From the show I spent a small amount of money, I bought a new tank, a book on molluscs, some nicely cheap coir, some moss peat, and a new addition to my slowly growing menagerie.

Meet copernicus, an achatina achatina, or tiger snail, one of the largest snails kept in captivity, he isn't too dissimilar to their cousin fulica, however they do like to be kept slightly hotter and humid, hopefully he'll grow to a nice big snail!

If I could have I would have gotten a lot more than little Copernicus. I'm sure I would have walked away with a burrowing cockroach, a millipede or two, a couple of pill bugs (which were very very cute) and in particular a megalobulimus oblongus, a very special snail with an awesome mustache, however my bank would not accommodate to purchase one, or many of the other snails that I wished to purchase, so for now I will make do with little Copernicus and wait to see what I can get next year.. who knows maybe someone will come with me then.

In conclusion, if you are interested in insects at all, or found them interesting as a child, take a trip down to the AES entomology show next year, it only costs £3 to get in, and who knows maybe you'll come away with something that you'll treasure for years.