BIG NASTIES

"Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. If you are not stung or pronged to death, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents or left to stagger to death in the baking outback." This is roughly what Bill Bryson writes in one of his books about this country.








Yesterday, while I was hanging the laundry, I casually put my hand into the peg (clothes pins) bucket to get a peg and there was a big black spider with a red stripe on it's back....the notorious Red Back Spider. The Black Widow is a close relative and only differs by appearance The female spider bite can cause serious illness and even death. I just found out that it favors proximity to human habitation. Isn't that great! I quickly acted like a girl, and called my brave husband to dispose of the lethal arachnid.

Here is a picture of a mud wasp building a nest next to our front door. I don't think you can appreciate the size of this wasp in the picture. It looks like a prehistoric bee or something found in a thriller movie called "Attack of the Killer Aussie Wasps". We would wait for the enormous wasp to disappear and then we repeatedly knocked the nest down but it continued to rebuild. It wasn't until my brave husband came to the rescue again and killed it that we stopped having an addition added to our house.



Next is a picture of snake crossing the trail right in front of us as we are out for a bush walk. It blended in so well that we barely saw it. We immediately got scared, excited and nervous. Why you ask? Because 7 of the world's most poisonous snakes live in Australia. As my family is gawking at this snake, an Aussie walks by and said "oh that little tree Python, that's nothing, they get to be 5 meters long."




Cockroach, cockroach, cockroach. Did I say cockroach? We have seen so many cockroaches and I still freak out when I see one. Usually they are on their backs with their legs dangling in the air, doing the dead bug dance. Did you know they can live 7 days with their head cut off? They only die once they've starved to death since it's hard to eat without a head. One evening I was getting a cup out of the cupboard and I saw something quickly move. I then noticed a hole in the back of the cupboard that the cockroaches come up.






Oh bats! These are actually called flying foxes. They haven't actaully attacked us but I'm not waiting around until they do.










It is currently 'Magpie Swooping Season'. When you least expect it, a magpie bird will sneak up from behind and fly so fast and close to your head that you never knew it was coming. All you can do is jump and scream. They're about the size of a raven or small seagull. Mike almost had a heart attack on the golf course this morning when he was ambushed just prior to hitting his chip shot.

We still have time and room for visitors. Anyone interested???