Poisonous Beast Test

As I was taking the laundry off the line one evening earlier this week I heard a rustle in the grass. 

Me being who I am, a nature-lover, an animal-lover, an ugly beast lover, and an immigrant myself, I immediately thought fondly of the little - or big - cane toad who was probably hopping nearby.

"Hey Ryan," I yelled.  "Run and ask your father for a flashlight."  (Ryan was stationed nearby to deal with my imaginary nighttime fears - vampires and werewolves lurking in the bushes - not with toads and snakes.)

Jedi Knights

Within seconds - I barely ever get a response this fast from my men - Damon and the three boys were by my side, carrying not only torches (whatever, can I mix Englishes, please?!) but armed with baseball and cricket bats.

Like there really was a werewolf after me.  And a baseball bat was going to make the difference if there was.

"Honestly, Damon.  A cane toad isn't going to kill me.  I just wanted to see the little guy, not mash him to bits."

"They're poisonous though."  Damon replied.  Treading rather carefully.

Yeah, only if I lick it.

Damon is right, you are actually obligated by law to kill the little buggers here if you see one.  They are an introduced species - intentionally introduced by early morons trying to get rid of the cane beetle.  Like most other introduced species, they thrive here, outbreeding native fauna and destroying the ecosystem.  My guess is they dealt with the cane beetles though.

If we could find a way to ship 'em to Haiti, they are the same toads whose venom is used in Haitian voodoo ceremonies for its hallucinogenic properties.

And I can't kill 'em.  First of all you have to prove it's a cane toad and not some other local toad.  And then I just can't bring myself to blame that one cute little toad for all the destruction his species does to the habitat.  It wasn't his fault he was brought here.  And again, I'm an immigrant too.  (Really I just can't see myself allowing anyone to kill anything, let alone with a baseball bat.  Or a cricket bat or golf club either.  And who the heck wants to stick one in the freezer next to the icecream?!)

What to do when you aren't sure?  (Matthew has his doubts.)

Two days later we were at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where we were fortunate enough to see the keepers taking some of their charges out for exercise.

"Is that poisonous?"  a woman asked me, eyeing the large green python on the ground with suspicion.

"No.  No.  It's a python."  I reassured her.

"But how can you tell?" she insisted, not at all perturbed by my rather odd accent.  (Like I should be an authority on native Australian fauna!)

"Well, frankly, " I told her.  "I can't really.  I just go on the attitudes of the zookeepers handling her."

Send in an overconfident brother!  (Aidan checks it out.)

Aussies are pretty brave, to the point of nonchalance - Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter is a BIG hero here (and his zoo is right up the road) - but even Aussies will exercise caution - and USE a snake stick - when dealing with poisonous snakes that eh, might not KILL you outright nowadays, but will certainly give you quit a sting, put you in the hospital for a few weeks and generally ruin an otherwise perfectly good day. 

So that when the kids and I got to the beach yesterday and saw a bunch of large, blue plastic-looking jellyfish lying all over the sand and in the water, although my INITIAL reaction was BLUE BOTTLE, the saner part of me thought that even Aussies wouldn't be letting their children swim if they REALLY WERE blue bottles.  (They are called Portugese Man of War everyone else, but Aussies like to put a light-hearted spin on it!  Box jellyfish, also blue, are also deadly.  I believe THESE were blue blubber jellyfish though.  Perfectly harmless.  I checked!)

Touch it and see!  (We DID ask first!)

A few weeks ago we got the kids - ALL of the kids, not just ours - out of the water when a fin pierced the shoreline.  It was probably a dolphin, but it popped up quickly.

I am SO bummed it disappeared just as quickly.  Shark OR dolphin, I would have REALLY LOVED TO SEE THAT!  As long as I wasn't in the water.

Ryan's solution.  Bring shark bait.

So that, just in case there were any doubts by now, this really IS the place for me.  The Huntsmen join me in the evenings when Damon is out.  And I just let them out the back door.  The tiny little spiders help me hang up the laundry.  I haven't actually SEEN a redback - the POISONOUS one - but I figure if it's flourescent yellow or green or that really pretty, snowy white I'm clear.  And the little guys swing about happily letting me get my work done.

You can pretty much tell how dangerous something is by watching an Aussie react to it.

And maybe letting him touch it first!

A Day at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

"Hey, guess which one of those groups of people over there are German tourists."

We call this giving Canadians a bad name!  (The boys have their own style.)

We were at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, atop the kangaroo meadow, and Damon couldn't resist asking.

I looked over the group.  There, that group of four adults with two small children between them, the brand-new signature back-packs and rain gear and carrying their own lunch.  Damn can I pick a stereotype.   Nope.  (Although it did turn out that they hailed somewhere from eastern Europe.) 

I looked again.  Aha!  The young couple in the starched blue jeans, the latest photography gear (although put to shame by the Asian tourists who came by the busloads later!), and again, the crisp rain gear, new hiking boots.  Everything just a little bit too perfect.

Yup.  That was them.

Only true Aussies can be this cold when it is 15 C out!

"They're smiling though."  I said to Damon.

"Yeah," said Damon.  "There's another guy with a German accent entertaining a bunch of Australian girls too."

"Must be Swiss"  I replied.  (I was right!)

Too bad the only kids who would pose for me JUSt reach the 'Toilets'  sign!

Later I ran into the cute, young Germans again.  Because they were cute.  They were just so darn happy to be here.  Glowing and smiling, they came running over to the koala enclosure I was standing in front of.  And addressed eachother in English.  "Look at that one!  Look at him!  Did you see THAT?  HE'S MOVING!"

I smiled at them.  "Pretty amazing when they actually move. isnt' it?"

"First one we've seen move all day." they answered.  "And look" - cameras going click-click-click - "THERE HE GOES AGAIN!"

I lef them to their joy.  After all the koala hadn't even left his tree branch.  Just opened his eyes an moved a few limbs a couple of times.

And I'd already run out of battery filming shot after shot of other almost inanimate koalas earlier in the day. 

"Seventeen shots of the exact same pose." says Damon.

C'MON!  Can't have too many shots of this!

Yeah, but they are just so INCREDIBLE to behold.  Even if they aren't moving.  How many shots of the kids do we need anyway?  And unlike the koalas, they move too fast for me to focus.

So that that's really the way you tell a tourist from a bona-fide Aussie at the zoo.  The Aussies are hurrying by looking for something a bit more exciting - like the sheep shearing demonstration or the birds of prey falconry show.  The rest of us are staring in wonder at creatures that will contine to not move, not even open their eyes in fact, for 22 hours out of every day.

But a dog who can walk on sheep is worth photographing.

Um.  I think we have these in the US too boys!

Aussies also like the venomous creatures demonstrations - snakes and lizards and stuff.  Koalas don't kill you if you step on one.  And they actually move fast enough once out of the trees to get out of your way so you DON'T step on one.

Largest eagle in Australia.  Cool.  But I worked with Bald Eagles in Alaska, so I'm a little spoiled.

Sure, the crocs are cool.  The images of kangaroos spread across vast plains.  (All we've seen is really sleepy kangaroos, about on par with the koala for energy levels.  Do those things REALLY hop?!)

But the wombat won't show more than his butt during the daytime.  Keepers actually laugh when you ask about the echidna.  "I've seen him twice - and I've been here three years." said one.  "You do know that they're noctural, don't you?!"

You get laughed at for taking pictures of the local pests - those flocks of cockatoos, lorikeets and gallahs, that hang about.

Local pests. The rainbow lorikeets.

Ah heck.  They keep the tourists happy!

Not only did this guy talk, he spoke with an Aussie accent.  We found that as immensely amusing as the Aussies found us for speaking with hum so long.

Bu Aussies ARE proud of their koalas. 

Um boys.  We have dirt at home.  You're missing the lorikeets.

Just not excited enough to actually stop and take pictures of them.

New Neighbours

These little guys have taken up residence in the palm tree out back.  I am going to assume one of them ISN'T a guy!  Flocks of these rainbow lorikeets have joined the ibises and kookaburras and cockatoos and other parrots nesting out in front of our complex.  Yes, they are LOUD neighbors, especially right before sunrise and then again at sunset when the cockatoos feel the need to practice fighter-bomb formations all around our yard!

But I get worried now if I DON'T hear the kookaburras laughing at us at 3:45 AM.  And yes, I DO believe they are laughing at us.  Although I am glad someone told us they sound more like monkeys than laughter because that made them much easier to identify.  I am still waiting to hear the sounds of pigs grunting - because that means the koalas have decided to share tree-space for breeding.

The kookaburras also woke us up every morning while we were camping over the Easter holidays.  Hearing a kookaburra laugh makes you realize how silly you really are!  It's like two people across a crowded room suddenly pointing at you and laughing at loud.  You immediately want to check your zipper.  I think kookaburras were put on this earth to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously. 

There are signs that I am going Aussie.  I drink milk in my tea now.  (And it is chai tea, which you can actually get here - yay!)  I wear summer dresses to just pop on over to the neighbors' that would be considered personal lingerie in Germany.  (They MAKE shirts with bras built in here so that you don't have to wear them, yay!  The store mannequins dress wrinkly AND I even bought a skirt that you are supposed to tie up after washing so that is stays properly crinkled.  Maybe it's not that I'm going Aussie.  Maybe I just found the perfect place to be who I was all along!)

I can identify the Southern Cross.  AND Orion's belt, the only constellation I could consistenly identify in the Northern Hemisphere and one I was really going to miss seeing.  (If Ryan was named after anything, it was Orion's belt and Prince's song "In the Arms of Orion.")  We kept spotting it here and telling ourselves not to be silly.  But no, Orion can be seen in the Southern Hemisphere too.  He is lying on his side with his sword pointing in the air (hmmm!) - and the Aussies call him ' The Dipper' since lying that way he looks like a large ladle.  But it's OUR Orion.  And it makes me happy to have him here.

But I don't think I will EVER be Aussie enough to take the wildlife around me for granted.  I have always LOVED birds.  They don't need people.  The ones I really like - like parrots and birds of prey and herons - can really cause some damage.  I gotta like that in a species.

Our new neighbours are so fresh.  (Look at that, I even brought myself to spell 'neighbours' with an 'o'!)  As I was hanging the laundry out to dry this week, our lorikeets were building their nest, cheekily dropping bits of inner bark dirt onto our clean sheets.  Last night, as I was pulling down some school uniforms, a HUGE chunk of bark came down off the gum tree.  Practical joke or attempted territory expansion?

Then they twist their little heads and look to see what I am up to down here.

Worth a bit of bird shit on the sheets, I'd say!  (Noting however that we have ONE breeding pair and NO shit yet!)

POOP!

We had koala poop outside our front door this morning! 

Identified by the kids.

Kinda makes up for the 3:45 AM cockatoo wake-up calls.  With the kookaburra laughing his head off.

Although to be honest, that still hasn't gotten old either.

The Wonders of Australia / Part One: The Koala

I'm still not up on all the accents – Australian, English, New Zealand, mixes of all three who have spent time in all three at some point or another – so that I've had to come up with another way to distinguish an Australian from a foreigner without risking offending anyone by asking.

The Australians are the ones running past the koala exhibit to get to the goats at the petting zoo.

The rest of us can be seen gazing up at the little guys in awe and admiration, snapping shots – still-lifes as it were since koalas don't move much – and shouting to eachother everytime one of the koalas shows signs of life.

''Oh. Oh. Ryan. Quick. That one just moved an ear.'' (Opened an eye.)

''Damon. Hurry up with the camera. I think that one might be stretching.''

''Oh. No. Never mind. No, I don't think you need to bother with the video recorder.''

Koalas don't move much.

In fact, we were a bit worried about Aidan this week. He's gone from what we called ''Aidan's brain in Australia'' -which consisted of running around in circles and then throwing himself from side to side- to going catatonic with his hands clawed and a blank expression on his face.

Turns out he's playing koala.

He just goes stiff all of a sudden, claws up his hands and stiffly sits staring blankly at nothing.

We thought he was having a fit of some sort.

But he's real easy to pick up and carry around on your hip when he's in role. Like the zookeeper and her koala last week at the zoo.

In Aidan's world, koalas speak in very hoarse voices and stilted sentences.

In the real world, koalas are an endangered species. The zookeeper told us they only live in scattered pockets now. There are only about 2,000 left in our area. 500 a year are killed by cars. Koalas are slow. Another 500 a year are killed by pet dogs. Koalas are slow. (Andrew did the math in his head. Not looking good for the little guys then, is it?)

Then there's the loss of habitat. (Hang head low as we think of the townhouse development we are in and the koala land it usurped. ''We saved that tree over there because there were koalas in it.'' the developer told us. Like any self-respecting koala was going to stay in a tree surrounded by townhouses.

We saw one in a tree across from our house the other day. And stopped and pointed and made real tourists of ourselves. But I consider myself lucky to get here before they are gone. (At the same time that I realize I am part of the reason they are gone.) In twenty years, or ten, or even two according to Andrew's math, we'll be telling kids that koalas used to run through our yards.

Or amble slowly anyway.

All too soon, koalas will cease to be a backyard neighbor and become an exotic animal here in Australia as well. I won't be able to tell the Australians apart at the zoo anymore.

It's all right. Australians don't take offense very easily.

But it really is a shame about the koala.