Possum Galore
A life ‘Down Under’!
Home Alone.
I have mentioned before the weirdness of the approach of the festive season in these tropical climes but I will say it again...it is very odd walking into the cool of an air-conditioned supermarket from the baking heat of the car park to hear Paul McCartney “Simply having a wonderful Christmas-time.”. It’s all very ‘Twilight Zone-y’ to me and is going to take a lot of getting used to. Apparently, house decoration for the festive season is pretty serious over here and there is already one house just up the road that twinkles at night like Blackpool illuminations....but we are not even in December yet and there will be more to come. There was a whole segment on the news the other night that listed local areas to visit once December starts where the neighbours in whole streets festoon their houses in twinkling tat! Will has promised a tour one night.Will has an induction evening tonight for the parents of the new starters in the new school year and he is going it alone while the Kindergarten teacher is tied up with a domestic medical emergency. He took Dulcie to the optometrist this morning. I had to stay home alone in case the ‘Blue Care’ (home-help) woman came. I was hoping she would because I wanted to find out if she had caught that ‘King Brown that was running, slithering wild about her place. We didn’t see her. She came later in the morning when Will and I were out shopping for and hunting down the bargains Dulcie wanted.This evening he went off to the Kindergarten having prepared his power point presentation and having cooked our tea...Butter Chicken. His brother Danny and sister, Wendi were coming for tea with Dulcie and I. I was ‘home alone’ again with Will’s family. It was quite daunting. They are all lovely and all I had to do was steam some bok choy, cook the rice and toast the naan but I was sooo nervous!All went well however. As usual the talk ended up on the subject of snakes! Wendi had seen a large carpet snake (python) heading onto her roof from a nearby tree and later that night she and her husband heard thumping sounds coming from the attic. Her husband, Geoff went up to and saw two male pythons battling for the territory. They heard the loser slithering away later in the night.“Did you not block up the holes where they got in?” I asked.“No” she said, “they can’t get in the house.”So I told her the story of Ros’s Possum...You wouldn’t think they could get in...but they can eat your walls down!
Nick Allen, Insect Food!
I have been feasted upon my mosquitoes! I think they have been waiting for me! I am a great big, fat festive meal of a turkey to the mosquitoes of Australia! I was going to write a ‘What is the point of a mosquito?! ‘ entry for the blog and googled it only to find that despite being the World’s most deadly creature they are indeed vital to the flippin’ ecosystem. Fish, apparently, need them! If only we could get fish to eat plastic bottles, tyres and supermarket trolleys then we could wipe out mosquitoes for good.It’s only the females who feed on me apparently. They need my blood to help them with their egg production...so, thanks to me there are probably many more mosquitoes in the World.There are very few bits of me that have not been probed by their blood extractors. I am sure some have even probed me through my t shirt! They particularly find my left shoulder very tasty.I never hear their ‘whine’ nor feel them injecting their anti-coagulant into me but later when the lump appears, Boy! They don’t half itch!I have my ‘Stingose’, a clear gel that I smear on which turns white and powdery and relieves the itch. My legs are scratched to bits where I have tried but failed to resist this itchiness.My day has been very domestic. I felt like a pioneer woman of yesteryear doing three loads of washing, defrosting a freezer with just a towel (I am not sure pioneer women of yesteryear had freezers but that doesn't matter) and sweeping the man-cave. Dulcie was outside clearing some dead maidenhair fern. I had finished my chores so went to see what she was doing. I felt my leg stinging and was desperate to scratch it but resisted. Dulcie moved onto weeding the ‘Fernery’ and I went in search of ‘Stingose’ to relieve my leg.I bent down to rub some gel on the stinging part and a flippin’ ant ran off down my leg. It had been feeding on my wound...and without my permission! The stinging immediately stopped and I saved some 'Stingose'.Dulcie had had enough of weeding but I said I would finish it off for her if she wanted. She sat on the steps and supervised me. A little lizard popped out to watch me. I felt like holding out a toe for it to munch on!Being part of the food chain, as I am, it is important that I also feed to keep my strength up. We had some left over pasta for lunch and 2 Anzac biscuits. Perhaps mosquitoes like sugar?We spent the afternoon playing cards. I won two games of ‘knock poker’ and a game of euchre and then ‘let’ Dulcie win the last game.I asked her about the story of the little pig and the molasses. It was far better in my imagination than the real thing.It seems Oiris’s husband had a little pig that somehow ended up covered in molasses. Oiris took it in and bathed it and put it in the log basket beside the fire. Some woman came to visit and heard it snorting and thought Oiris had a child hidden away!Yes! I can understand now that you would get quite annoyed if you heard that story more than once!
Aaaagh! Eek! Ugh! Phew!
Just before bed I turned in my chair, at the table, at Frogknot and saw the huntsman sat on the wall behind me. At the same moment a little beetle came ambling merrily but stupidly along and the huntsman pounced on it. I grabbed my camera to take a picture but as I bent close the eight legged huntress ran at me carrying its prey. Aaagghh! I cried out and leapt out of the way but ii turned and came after me. I cried out again and it dropped the beetle and scurried away. The beetle ambled merrily but stupidly off after the spider. Will was most amused by the whole farce.Three nights and Frogknot and no rat! What a good job I did not waste money on a trap! Somewhere in the back of my mind, though, is the thought that he has met his end at the forked tongue of a snake...and now the snake has taken up sssssssssilent ressssssidence! Eek!We saw turtles in the dam this morning, at least two of them. How the heck did they get there?! It must be a hell of a trek for a turtle up the hill to the dam by the house.We tidied and packed our things and headed back to Brisbane stopping at Aratula for a....pie! (Nice filling but the pastry is nowhere near as good as the Acacia Ridge bakery!)We arrived back at Celtis St the same time as a storm and just got our things brought in before it rained. Will checked the rain gauge and there had been 35 mls since we had left. It was really humid and Dulcie had the air-con on but every time you opened the door to go out it was like stepping into a steam room!She said it had been really hot on Friday too and she had had to go out to check the mail. She said the heat on the steps down burned the soles of her feet so when she was going back she put down stepping stones of junk mail to protect her feet on the way up.I laughed thinking about it.“It’s not funny Nick.” She said.“I am laughing in sympathy,” I said.She was also not pleased that the cockatoo that stole the parsley had been back and eaten all the flowers off the lovely plant she has in a pot on the back verandah.I went down to check the veggies Will had planted. It’s all looking good. The corn and beans we planted just before we went to Frogknot are poking above the mulch too. There was a patch of mulch that looked as if it had been scraped away. I thought it might have been the cockatoo. I bent to scrape it over again and realised there was something under the surface. It was a large cane toad sheltering from the heat. Ugh!‘The Ashes’ were on, then they were off because of the storm, then they were on again, then another storm arrived and they were off again. Dulcie switches the tv off when a storm comes.There was a bit of hail in the second storm but it was only pea-sized. There was tennis ball sized hail last week on the Gold Coast.When the storm had passed ‘The Ashes’ were back on again. We were just in time to see England lose. I couldn’t give two hoots!After tea we went over to see Ros who had a TV cabinet for the man-cave for us. Our Telly is heading back to China after spending some time in Japan, but we have had notification that it is expected to arrive in Brisbane on the 27th, fat chance, unless it has hyper drive or is on some kind of marine Tardis.We dashed back to watch the 50th Anniversary episode of Dr Who. What a joy that it was on a channel that does not show adverts every 2 minutes. Phew!