Garden Guests

I'm not sure how many people choose to name individual critters that share their homes. But I like to. I don't mean pets, more the occasional interloper that comes along and stays for a while. Our most recent visitor is 'Eight' - and he's a very handsome fellow. Eight is a Grey huntsman and as such is one of the largest spiders by leg span in Australia - reaching a said span of around 24cm - roughly, your average dinner plate size. And they're fast - with the ability to cover areas around five times their size in just one second - in human terms, that's the equivalent of Usain Bolt running flat out! He is venomous, but like most, though not all huntsman - his venom isn't known to be medically significant to humans. That being said, huntsman spiders are implicated in a number of vehicle accidents throughout the country ... Picture the scene, you're driving - singing along to some banal auto-tuned garbage on the wireless, when the sun starts to g

Before we begin, a word of warning. The second image in this post is graphic and shows an infected wound. If you continue to read this post, I would strongly advise that you put your sandwich down beforehand. You know when you were a kid and ya kept getting hurt, bumping into things - falling off your bike and such? People would say you were in "the wars". Well, it seems that - at least for me, the wars continue. At our joint we have a number of critters that come and go - some are benign and some are not. But on the whole, we all tend to get along without too much drama. Occasionally though, there are small conflicts ... A short time ago I was bitten on the hand by a Brown house spider, they are related to the Red-back spider and while nowhere near as venomous, they do have an annoying little bite. And it seems no matter how many Daddy long-leg spiders we encourage into the house, the Browns just keep on, keeping on. I have been bitten a few times, normally resulting i

In this time of division, axe grinding and polarising ideologies, I occasionally find myself getting caught up in other people's agendas - I'm not immune to a well written article or searingly insightful cartoon or meme. But I try to inure myself against full on pearl clutching hysteria by being very judicious in my consumption of 'news' - not just its source, but its content. I like words - I may have a somewhat limited ability to use them coherently myself, but I admire and enjoy others who can, and do. What I have noticed more and more, however, is how words are being manipulated to the point that they are losing their original, agreed upon meaning, and are becoming vague clumsy sound bites cast out over the waters of debate in an effort to make discourse even murkier. Much like charity, I believe that conservation begins at home. Huge corporate entities and so-called NGO's, are not the answer to whatever the crisis of the day is. Govt most certainly isn'

So there we were, start of the week - enjoying the F1, ( yes, I know - it's an elitist sport that sycophantically panders to the ethereal whims of the 'woke' movement ), but I just try to ignore that side of it and enjoy the racing. Anyway, Jo had her fresh from the garden strawberry and herb blend gin, and I had my vodka based paint-thinner. We were all set. We watched the race - Jo is a die hard Hamilton fan, while I'm firmly in the Alonso camp, thus arguments abounded and there was the usual amount of moaning and gesticulating at different points of the race. Fun for everyone. The night past, and having been laid low with the Mexican beer flu, I was soon asleep - no doubt a ghastly picture of limbs akimbo, complete with resonating snores, when, it seemed - the world was ending. From the foggy depths of my flu and voddy induced slumber, I became aware of quite a lot of shouting. Now, as I was asleep and the race was over - I was fairly sure it wasn't coming fr

On a whim, it was decided that a sojourn to the local National Park was in order. So with the sun comfortably set - it was off to Mt Lewis. The place has a chequered history in terms of exploitation and conservation. It was extensively logged and mined for tin - in fact, alluvial tin can still be seen in the creeks and pools throughout the park. Of course, we weren't there to do a bit of casual night-logging, our mission was simple. Critter bothering. We were hoping to spot a Chameleon gecko or two, but alas, that wasn't to be. TBH, that's the norm - at least for me. I might have a species in my head that I want to record and observe, but I don't get all forehead vein popping about it. If it happens, groovy, if not - it still beats zombieing out watching netflix right? As I alluded to, Mt Lewis, for the most part - is now a National Park. So any and all wildlife interactions were going to be hands-off affairs. I generally refrain from touching wildlife anyway, espec

A couple of days ago, I was about to take a break and glanced out the window to see what might be about. A wallaby or a bird to have a chat with over my cuppa perhaps?, when I noticed there was a blade of sugar cane serpentining its way along the deck. I did a double take - sure enough, it was a little snake. Now, despite what you might think, seeing a snake during the day - cruising on the deck is not a common occurrence. So I fell out the door and quietly approached it. The first thing I noticed was that it was missing most of its tail, ( I understand that everything from the head down looks like a tail, but snakes do have them all the same ). I was thinking about this as I attempted to I.D the unfortunate fellow, (I settled on Marsh snake, Hemiaspis signata for the I.D). But I couldn't stop thinking about the tail. I have no way of knowing how the snake suffered the injury; bird, shovel, mower - I just don't know. But without a tail, its chances of long-term survival are