The price of paradise

The price of living in paradise is clearly illustrated by this photo. It may indeed be a fake, but then I have seen one of these spiders up close, and it was as big as my husbands hand, and these birds are very small. Click here for more on this story. Of course there's always this gem as shown on the right. From this story.




I challenged Homer on the likelihood of the spider eating the bird thing. He insists that it is very likely.

"Don't you remember?" he asks, "We saw a spider as big as your head at Milla Milla?'

"No," I say. " If, and it is a very big if, I saw a spider that big I would remember running screaming from the area, and I don't."

"Oh," he replies helpfully, " Maybe you have repressed the memory."

More gardening

All this blogging about my garden must be getting a bit boring by now, but I couldn't resist these pictures. This is a Dainty Green Tree Frog, otherwise known as a Graceful Green Tree Frog, that I found while I was weeding. It took me about seventy shots with my camera to work out how to take a clear up close piccie because the camera kept focusing on the leaves the frog was sat on.


It really was very beautiful with a creamy white underbelly. It was also a bit of a poser it must be said, maintaining this position for a very long time until I managed to get a few good shots in. I hope this means I'm building an ecosystem in my garden, it does mean I need to get the water feature sorted out pronto with some anti-cane toad devices built in.

I live on the site where the first cane toads were released in Australia, the worlds first effort at biological pest control on a big scale. They proved an unmitigated disaster and have displaced much of the indigenous wild life, including tree frogs in many places. (Rabbits are illegal here as well, for similar reasons.)

lemon tree issues

My lemon tree and I have issues. I want lemons, it wants, well that's the problem, I don't know what it wants so that it will give me lemons.

The first year I got one small hard as rock scabby looking lemon. The second I had two hundred percent increase in yield, three scabby looking lemons.

Finally this year we appear to have come to some sort of accommodation and it is fairly loaded with baby lemons. The only thing I have done differently is hurl coffee grounds at it in a fit of pique.

To avoid the scabby scaly lemon thing I have been advised to use white oil,( a mixture of vegetable oil and washing up liquid). Of course I went and bought more expensive washing up liquid than I would normally use in the house and special oil for the purpose, I hope the tree appreciates it, because I had seen nothing wrong with buying more expensive stuff to spray on the tree than I use for the kitchen until my husband pointed out the total lack of logic.



Here's #3 and 4 "helping". This mainly involves climbing on the fence and arguing over the spray bottle until one pushes the other off.




We found a huge grasshopper, which #4 wants as a pet, here's a shot of him going off up the garden to catch it, before I stopped him. I don't really fancy finding a huge dead grasshopper in a jar under his bed in a week when he's forgotten about it.


When Homer realised I was using a tiny little spray bottle he grandly got out his master blaster model and loaded it up. Of course I just have to hope he washed it well from his poisoning spree. He (of course) didn't read the dilution instructions for the white oil. A fact he didn't admit to when questioned, but it became obvious as he sidled off to the tap to add some water to his spray gun after I casually mentioned the dilution rate to #3, so as he could overhear it it doncha know.

Seriously?

There is a news item about some wild life rescue people being really chuffed as they have raised some baby sharks and are releasing them back into the wild. Good for them. Excellent work.

They are releasing them off the beaches of Sydney, one assumes because of the ready availability of a food source, surfers and swimmers. Obviously having been raised in an aquarium they will be familiar with this food soure and unafraid to approach it!

Spider bite

The next door neighbours small boy (SBND) got bitten by a spider yesterday. The boys were in a big group "exploring" the nearby bush when a spider "chased #4". The spider was probably madly trying to get away from all the noise a group of small boys can make and bumped into the next door neighbours kid but the boys were adamant, it was chasing #4. ( The spider must not be part of the warning net work that surrounds #4 every where he goes.)

Description of spider: As big as my hand, (that's all the hands present). Black, brown, hairy, fat,thin, red glowing eyes.

Fang marks: present, but at least an inch and a half apart. One big spider.

Who saw it: The victim, on close questioning no-one else had seen it.

Symptoms: None, other small children kept asking if he was going to die, he kept asking if he was going to die, but he wasn't going to die.

The ambulance was called, those fang marks were a long way apart, we were thinking but not saying snake. We gave an antihistamine and applied an ice pack. (Standard first aid for bites.) After a bit of discussion the ambulance driver said " Oh yes, next door to #4"...As I said to my neighbour at least they know the street. (Actually in defence of #4 the ambulance has spent quite a bit of time next door as well, just not as much as here.)

The ambulance pulled up on our drive-way, " Hi Eve, How you going, what's he done now?"
"No its SBND, "
"Oh," short silence as paramedic re-adjusts his view of reality, "Right then, where's he at?"

He was carried off to the hospital while the ambulance man tried to get a description of the biting thing, he agreed those fang marks were a long way apart. The thing was now at least three feet across, but wasn't getting snake like. Good news.

Long lectures were given on the wisdom of going bare foot in the bush.

It was probably a huntsman spider because the size of the bite. Luckily SBND was home again a few hours later. He'd stopped asking if he was going to die and started asking if they could go to McD's on the way home. Huntsman spiders are nasty, you think you're not keen on spiders and then you find one of them in your shower or car and realise that actually you're petrified of spiders. The biggest one I've seen was about six inches across, and that is way too big for a good nights sleep when you know it's in the house.

Smiley Saturday

I recommend you try out Lightening's Smiley Saturday post today....I definitely got a laugh out of this one.

My smiles this week are because I finally got my freezer. Now I can store the excess vegetables I produce instead of boring the children to death with the same vegetable, again, again, and again. There are only so many ways you can hide green beans in a meal before they get wise to you, and only so much green tomato chutney you can make. ( BTW adding blue food colouring to carrots and calling them something else doesn't work, and looks awful, and the pan's looking a bit ropey.)

The box the freezer came in gave #4 a whole new project in the back yard. He always used to wear red t-shirts. Only red, only ever red. I was quite happy about this. From the corner of my eye I could always be aware of where he was without concentrating too hard on the gory details.

Recently he has taken to wearing camouflage, only camouflage. Now I can't be entirely sure of where he is when he's in the garden. I have considered buying him a red bandanna to overcome this. (It's no problem in the house....he'd have to camouflage himself with dust bunnies and old newspaper.)

Anyway the point of the story. Camouflage boy and his big cardboard box went into the back yard. He set up a trap. The trap is big enough to catch a man, I got a freezer in it. (Lets not picture an eight year old boy manhandling it into the backyard.) #4 and the cat lay in wait in to see what they would catch. I didn't like to spoil his creativity by pointing out that he was in camouflage, but the box wasn't. I might have lost part of the vegetable patch to his renewed efforts on the box.

I thought he had little chance of success, but he was quiet and not damaging anything, always a bonus.

So far he has caught all the chickens, individually and in a group, next doors blind shitzu, several dopey Minah birds (much to the cats joy, I intervened there)and of course his brother. The blind shitzu only fell for it once but his older brother has been trapped several times. I think when #1 comes home from work I'll send him into the garden and see if he falls for it.

Musings on being an expat

I just realised that is now seven years since we arrived in Oz, and it got me pondering on how we've done with our big move.

The flight here was a traumatic experience, twenty-four hours on a plane with four children, at the time aged 10, 7, 2 and 1 was NOT FUN. We arrived in the middle of the night expecting fairly similar temperatures to the UK, after all summer there, winter here? Right? No, wrong, so wrong. It was like being hit around the head with a warm wet towel, and it was 3am, it was as low as the temperature was going to get.

This was followed by a wild taxi ride to a rented house. (I left all the travellers cheques and passports in the taxi, having travelled exactly half way around the world I lost them when I arrived- the taxi driver actually came back to the house and returned them--wow! what a great country-honest taxi drivers.)

The taxi driver took great delight in telling us, much to our dismay, about the croc he had nearly run over the previous week at the airport. We have since found out that this is a fairly regular occurence at the airport. You may survive the crash landing, but then you have to avoid the crocs waiting at the end of the runway.

We have acclimatised fully to the weather now though, and as I sit here typing I am freezing, wrapped in winter woollies with only my nose showing. We can spot the tourists very easily at this time of year. They are the ones wearing micro dresses and shorts while the locals are wrapped in ugg boots, scarves and duffel coats.

When we first went to a shopping centre after arriving we stared in amazement at the offerings of thick jumpers, coats and scarves, " Who buys these things?" we asked each other. Its so hot! The answer, we do.

Update on the snake bite incident

Would you? The report of the snake bite incident which started as a small anonymous paragraph in our local paper has gone international. But would you? His picture is in the paper.

The quotes are pure North Queensland, as was his impromptu cure for his predicament, rum, good for all evils. ( Curing and causing.) You don't have to go out of town for a snake experience though. This picture is from a suburb in the inner city.

Living with the wildlife around here makes for interesting times. This picture is of a five meter croc that was caught next to a school in Bamaga
before being brought back to Cairns to a croc farm. When one of these monsters is caught it is kept in the local watch house (police station) until transport has been arranged. This leads to a fall of in arrests for being drunk and disorderly....wonder why?

And finally, how they catch them.
Would you really want to be after a five meter croc in that tinny , and be tempting it over for a snack with a dead chicken?

My latest run in with the wild life was this morning when I saw a lizard outside the shop in the carpark. They are not dangerous ( I think) but the lizard was certainly in danger of being run over so I decided to scare it back into the grass at the back of the shop. I circled (warily) around the lizard and approached it in the hopes it would be scared and run away. The **** thing chased me. Cue middle aged woman running across the carpark with her hands in the air, uttering slightly girly screams.

The lizard promptly vanished leaving me running across the car park away from nothing. mmmmmmmm. Well every-one knows I'm a bit dotty so I'll probably get away with it. I've been trying to identify it with no luck, I think it was some sort of giant skink as it was at least eighteen inches long and smooth and brown.