Saturday 22 March 2008

All creatures great and small...and scary and deadly too


This is one of the more wonderful visitors we have had to our urban backyards over the years.

In our previous home, every Spring a family of blue tongue lizards would emerge, complete with new babies, and sun themselves on our paved areas. One one occasion, one of the lizards got stuck down a clogged drainage area which was flooding fast, so we swooped it up and let it recover in the kids' cubbyhouse overnight.

They were always wonderful to watch, and used to like eating strawberries which the neighbours would feed the family as they went door to door. A zoologist lived up the road and would tend to their war wounds from time to time.

But I can't say all my encounters with wildlife have been calm ones over the years. In fact, when I look back, I may well have had more than my share of not so great encounters.

I have been bitten by an emu in Adelaide;
Found myself floating above a poisonous sea snake in Fiji (and of course falling off the lilo in shock);
Walked through a swarm of angry wasps in Cairns - well we were walking and the swarm just kind of appeared;
Been centimetres away from stepping on a scorpion in bare feet in Bali - and luckily pushed sideways at the last moment;
Seen way too many deadly snacks in built up places;
Swum through a swarm (pack, school?) of blue bottle jelly fish on the Sunshine Coast - and been doused in vinegar to relieve the pain;
And sustained a very weird and long-lasting spider bite on the leg which took a LONG time to heal.

Don't get me wrong, I am actually a big lover of nature and wildlife - although these days I am overly cautious about snakes and snake prone areas.

1 comment:

Suzy said...

Ow! That is an impressive list of animal injuries.

Great lizard photo.

suzy