The huntsman...

One of the more dangerous creatures we have here is the huntsman spider. Now they are not dangerous in the sense that they are poisonous, though they can give you a bit of a bite. They are dangerous for another reason, which I experienced personally the other day.

Now I am actually quite fond of huntsman spiders. They are rather large and move quickly and I have early memories of seeing the things on the wall of my bedroom. Most children would probably be scared, but I had a book of nursery rhymes, and in it Little Miss Muffet was being chased off by a very friendly looking spider. I guess so as not to give kids nightmares. So I have never been particularly worried by the things, and will go out of my way to put them outside if I find them in the house. They take care of cockroaches and other nasties anyway.

So the other day I'm driving home from work and I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I look up and there sticking out from the sun visor is a couple of large arachnid legs. Theres a huntsman behind the sun visor.

Now huntsmen like to crawl into narrow warm spaces and they seem to find sun visors pretty irresistible. So picture this situation. You are driving down the road and turn towards the setting sun, momentarily blinded. You reach up and fold down the visor and a giant spider drops into your lap and starts crawling over your leg. Worse if you are wearing shorts or a miniskirt. You panic and start flailing at the spider, and drive into oncoming traffic or a lamp post!



It happens. Now I was lucky that I was driving south and I wasn't about to use the sunvisor. So I had time to pull over to the side of the road and get the thing out of my face. But I can truly understand how you could panic in this situation, and why huntsmen are considered to be dangerous!

The midwinter swim

So, Saturday is the shortest day of the year. And how best to celebrate the winter solstice than to start the day with a dawn swim. Its a bit of a tradition worldwide, though usually practiced in places that are substantially colder in midwinter: like to the point of having ice around. In Finland, swimming in midwinter is standard practice, though usually done in conjunction with sauna. But I digress.

Doug Jones (aka Junior) has organized the swim. Doug is a very fit 76 yr old, retired policeman and AFL player. Sunrise is 6:35am, so a few hardy souls meet at Canoe Point ten minutes early. One minor problem: the tide is way out so there is no water. We have a short trek up the beach to where there is a bit of sand and sea water. We leap in just as the sun is peeking above the horizon. The water is surprisingly warm, it has been clear and light winds for a few days. We stay in long enough for the sun to get above the horizon and out to warm up and drink some coffee.

A winter dawn swim is a bit of an anomaly here (only halfminds seem to participate), though you can swim year around in the warmth of the day. But surprisingly the beach is deserted, even on weekends. Children are playing video games or going to the pictures.

And that probably explains why Australia now ranks number one in the world in obesity rates.

Sweetie Pie

My business partner arrives back from a meeting with a large box and announces that it is a pet for his kids and I have to deliver it because he is on his way out of town. We open the box and it contains a very hungry fledgling magpie. It had followed him around the parking lot and seemed pretty tame, so he brought it with him. "He followed me home, mummy, can we keep him...?"

We only had a bit of bread in the office, which didn't do much to appease the birds hunger. So I took it home to John's family who had been forewarned that it was on its way. On the way I picked up a selection of meat and other delectables. Birds here tend to be carnivores.

Anyway, we got it home and the kids were delighted. The bird even more so, it ate about half a pound of leftover KFC, ham, catfood and other goodies. However it had no idea about how to feed itself: you could put food in front of it and it would be ignored completely. It was very friendly and happy to sit on your arm or shoulder, so we e think it was probably a tame animal, raised from a chick that escaped from somewhere once it learned to fly.

We didn't have a proper cage, but there was a cat transporting box that looked like it would do the job. However the bird complained very vociferously when confined to the box. We let it out and it happily flew up and perched on the curtain rail.

Unfortunately the rail was too close to the wall for it to sit facing outwards, so it had to make do with facing the wall, like a child being punished. After a bit of stretching and preening, it perched on one leg, put its head under its wing and went to sleep.

So we hope that it will learn the basics of fending for itself and fly away soon. We will need to start it on grubs and worms and beetles pretty quickly: feeding them human food is not a good idea.