Of Castle Doors and Kangaroo Letterboxes

Let me set a scene for you.

It is a peaceful leafy Brisbane neighbourhood on a quiet weekday morning. The morning sun shines through the orange Poinciana trees, and the frangipanis are still pretty, even though the paths beneath them are littered with their fallen flowers.

Into this beauty and stillness I arrive on a little red Honda postie motorbike that sounds like an overgrown lawnmower with undertones of whipper-snipper. When I rev the engine in first gear, it sounds like there is a posse of speedway bikes racing in the distance.

My job is to deliver a single black and white pamphlet advertising tree cutting and stump removal, to every letterbox in Brisbane. I have started here in Redcliffe precisely because there are plenty of trees here and perhaps someone will need the service of the landscape company that employ me.

I have a postie bike with a plastic basket zip tied to the front, and a heavy wooden box held onto the back with three wood screws that let it bounce up and down on uneven ground.

I like to think that everyone is up and buttering their breakfast toast as they wonder why the mailperson came early today and I refuse to worry about anyone that might be having a lie in. The Queensland sun has been up since four thirty and this is the best part of the day.

It doesn’t sound like the world’s most desirable vocation but it is the job of my dreams. I get to ride a motorbike all over Brisbane and see different places every day. I set my own hours, plan my own routes, and get paid from the time I leave home until I return. It is so flexible that I can spend more time at home when Phil is here and do more work when he is away. I get lots of thinking time to plan my writing and I am not micro-managed.

This last is important to me because I have had some disappointing bosses. I used to be a middle level manager and managed up to one hundred and twenty people. I loved the managing part, but hated being managed.

One manager threw tantrums and tried to make me write up all my processes before I left because she really did not know how to do her job. Another claimed my work as her own and her failures were sometimes attributed to me.

In contrast there is nothing to think about in my new job except, where is the next letterbox and does it accept ‘junk mail.’ And of course, what will I discover next?

So far I have seen an ordinary house with a castle door, a concrete Viking frolicking with a concrete maiden, yards populated with gnomes, elves, and other whimsical features, and of course lots of funky letterboxes.

This is another wonderful way to explore Australia; one house at a time.

A Gecko in the Bathroom

Just like most people, I prefer to shower alone, but since moving into our new house, it has not been just a matter of walking into the bathroom on my own.

Just a few days after we moved in, I found a large spider in the bathroom and began squealing like a little girl. Luckily my husband was home to rescue me.

Since that first spider, I always check the room before I undress.

Over the last few months, I have found two more large black hairy spiders, two small speedy spiders, and several bugs. They all got gently relocated except for the one that got away. One of the biggest ones disappeared into the shower frame and never reappeared.

It was bad enough knowing it was there, but then the other day I walked into the bathroom and found something else I didn’t expect or want.

A small grey gecko clung on to the sides of the bath, looking for all the world like a rubber parody of a gecko. Its little black eyes looked like little beads stuck onto its head and its light colourless skin looked stretchy and artificial.

Unluckily it ran much faster than a rubber toy. Luckily I have had lots of practice with a plastic bowl and paper lid. He got hunted down and turfed out after a few minutes of clumsy handwork with my plastic bowl, and a few more minutes of admiring him in his confined space.

If he had turned up a few months earlier, I might have been kinder and placed him gently under one of the bushes that edge our property. After visits from numerous spiders, ants, mosquitos, a snake, and a frog, I was not so patient. The poor thing got thrown from the balcony into the nearest plant, along with a lecture on the inadvisability of coming inside the house again.

I like geckos in principle and have one on my house entrance

but I don't really want them up close and personal.

I thought that was it, but there was another surprise in store.

I went into my office to do some work on my computer and a small insect landed on my desk.

It looked like an ant with wings. It turned out was an ant with wings, and, it was not alone. Looking up I saw its whole extended family swarming around the light bulb on the wall.

Thank goodness for fly spray. And thank goodness for vacuum cleaners and dustpans.

That is how I learned that when some ants want to move to a new nest, they grow wings and follow the queen as she searches for a new spot. I am grateful they were attracted to the light or I might not have found them until they had set up a new nest under my bed.

It might be time to give up the dream of an organic home and buy myself an industrial strength fly spray dispenser.

A Lizard in my Pool

There seems to be a theme developing on the blog. I have had recent close encounters with koalas, and spiders, and even a snake in my living room. There is interesting wildlife popping by to visit daily. Luckily for me, the latest one did not come any closer than the pool in my garden.

Before I go on I need to explain that our pool was designed to be a swimming pool, but the previous owner neglected it for so long, that now it is a mass of pondweed, coffee coloured water, and insect larvae.

One day we will pump it out, disinfect it, and make it all sparkling new again so we can use it for its intended purpose. In the meantime, I love watching the birds skimming the surface for insects, and enjoy seeing the ducks treating it like their own personal hotel spa pool.

And now there is another reason to love having my own personal wildlife pond; a lizard has come by for a visit.

It seemed happy enough, sitting in our waste outlet, but it occurred to me that it might be stuck. It might not be able to climb the slick fibreglass pool walls and leave.

The next day I watched it swim at the edge of the pool and then reach out ineffectively to the water outlet, little hand flailing. As I watched he began to sink. His head stayed above water for a bit watching us with beady eyes, and then his whole body sank into the depths of the murky pool.

I called my husband over for advice.

Neither of us knows much about the lizard but we decided to play it safe.

We carefully manoeuvred the lizard onto a leaf rake and deposited it under some shady bushes, where it stayed motionless, and almost invisible among the twigs, until we left.

I am not sure if we saved the life of the lizard, or merely interrupted his morning swim. All I know is that if he was playing dead, he deserves an Oscar.

Just in case it happens again, I am going to put a knotted rope into the pool. The next lizard, goanna, snake, or skinny koala that gets through the fence into the pool will be able to find its own way out.

Is that A Frog Upstairs?

A while ago, a carpet snake turned up in my living room. A few weeks before that, I had two koalas in the trees outside my door.

I thought I had had my share of ‘Crocodile Dundee’ type adventures. Then the other night I came home to find a frog in my house. I wonder what will be next. A kangaroo? A pelican?

It is all seeming a little unlikely. I knew there was lots of local wildlife, I just had no idea that it would all want to come into my home.
I had just arrived home and it was a little dark. I walked upstairs, turned on the light, and the bouncy little grey thing hopped across the carpet looking for somewhere to hide. Luckily we still have no furniture in most of the upstairs rooms and he was easily cornered and taken outside by my intrepid Aussie boyfriend who is now my husband and wildlife wrestler.

I spent the next three minutes checking the house for frog sized cracks, as my husband vainly tried to reassure me that the frog came in through the door. Since the snake incident, I have always made sure the door was closed firmly. Perhaps my husband left the door open, or maybe it came in behind us as we arrived. I worry that if the frog got in then the snake might return. Perhaps he will hear about the frog and come back inside looking for a little grey snack.

Only a few days ago, after finding the third spider in a week, I waged war on all the bugs and spread a three month insect killer all along the skirting boards and ceiling beams. Obviously no one told the frog and he assumed we still had froggy treats on tap.

It reminds me of the children’s story about an old lady that swallowed a fly, and then swallowed a bird to eat the spider, a cat to eat the bird, a dog to chase the cat, a cow to scare the dog, and so on.

Perhaps one day we will be visited by a four foot goanna. They are not common here, but Phil assures me they exist. If there are any within a fifty mile radius, then I am sure one will turn up here eventually.

Perhaps I should invite it in. A goanna in the house would be too big to sneak up on me and might keep the house snake free. It’s worth a thought.

Of big things like ... Yetis?

 One of the things I love about this part of Australia is that everything is so big. Wonderful things, like large colourful birds, fish that fishermen can write home about, and kangaroos and wallabies that look to me like a kind of large rodent.

There are also annoying things like the bulbous, fat, and persistent flies. The third time I whack my arm and miss them, I remember they won’t be put off by a loud noise or a simple wave of the hand, no matter how “karate kid” fast.

Other insects are also large and sometimes come with teeth and fangs. I have come up close and personal with giant cockroaches, and furry black spiders of joke shop proportions. I have even had a snake enter my house and curl up to sleep in my living room.

So many things have been a surprise, and some are just plain mysterious.

Today I attempted to remove some of the garden weeds. I have been wrestling with an infestation of “Mother-in-Laws tongue. A blade shaped leaf that grows up to four feet high and has spread to plague proportions along our fence.

It fights back.

As I grab one end and pull it out, the other swings around and slaps me on the face, or tangles in my legs and tries to trip me up. Sometimes it succeeds.

Next to the aggressive weeds, there is also a gorgeous large flower that has grown up all on its own. It sprouted from a forgotten and sadly neglected pot in the overgrowth of the sadly neglected garden borders.

That is a big pot and those flowers are almost six inches across.

In Far North Queensland I watched an enormous cassowary cross the road.

Other large things are not as easy to identify. A while ago, I looked out my window and saw what looked like a large hare. It was three times the size of anything I had seen in my whole life. Of course the photo is blurry like the pictures of the loch ness monster or the yeti.

 

As a voracious reader of one too many Readers Digest ‘survival under wildlife attack’ stories, I am understandably nervous about a four foot high rabbit or a haystack of a bird with barbed wire feet.

Are these just bad photos, or the beginning of a new legend? You decide.

A Snake in my Living Room

The other day I was relaxing in my new comfortable easy chair and watching a little daytime TV when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. When I looked down, I found I had been joined by a six foot long python.

The only reason I didn’t jump out of my chair in fright was because I had met him a few days before.

I was hosing my garden when he appeared from the corner of the house. I tried to chase him away with a stream of water, but instead he took up residence in my garden shed. Stupidly, I left the door open so he could leave again.

I had only just come to terms with a snake in my garden. He seemed friendly enough and quite good natured when a neighbour and I spent twenty fruitless minutes trying to encourage him out of the shed with a broom and a long handled rake. I figured he could stay there if he wanted. I knew of others who had pet snakes and I knew it would not hurt me unless I hurt it first.

I was also told on good authority that they usually slide away when they see someone.

This one was apparently much friendlier. He climbed the outside stairs to the open back door, came inside through a slightly open door, crossed the living areas, came down the internal stairs, and then deliberately chose to come into the room where the TV was blazing away and there was bright fluorescent light.

It cruised lazily past my feet as if it owned the place, ignoring my polite but insistent requests to leave, and then went to sleep in a coil in the corner behind some tools that belong to my husband.

 

I know I am attractive to Aussie wildlife. The mossies always go for me first, and I am loved by leeches and ticks, but this was ridiculous.

Luckily I had friends I could call because this was beyond my ability to solve. I feel more comfortable with snakes than most of my friends, but this only means that I can look at them from six feet away without screaming.

The friend picked him up using a broom handle in the centre of his coil and dropped him into a spare recycling bin I had. We then wheeled him outside and let him out in the forest across the road.

It was exciting, but not something I want to repeat.

I spent my first fifty years growing up where there were no snakes. Now I have been up close and personal with several. Even people who have lived in Australia all their lives have usually not known one to come into the living areas.

I am just lucky I guess.

A Koala in my Garden (Part 2)

Last week I had a snake in my garden. This week I had another visitor. A much more cute and cuddly looking visitor. I finally saw the koala that has been visiting my back yard.

My husband, Phil, saw him first, just a shadow moving along the ground in the early light. When I arrived he had already started up the tree just outside our window, his furry body out of sight on the other side of the tree trunk. All we could see were his little claws clamped on either side of the trunk.

He climbed to a high branch and that sat there watching all around as we went outside and stared back at him. He was so cute. Koalas have round furry ears, and a surprisingly large flat black nose. Looking back at us he was teddy bear cute.

All day I kept checking on him. Apart from heading higher, he stayed in the same location and seemed to be dozing.

The next morning, I heard him growling, so I rushed out in my pyjamas. It took me ten minutes to find him just a few trees away, and then there was another surprise. A second lump on the tree, turned out to be another koala. This one was balanced on a slim branch out over the neighbour’s driveway.

As we watched, the first koala climbed cautiously down and then loped from tree to tree, down the garden, looking for the perfect spot.

Koalas are only active for a few minutes each day. They spend most of their day eating and snoozing. I feel particularly lucky to have seen this one moving.

The same day I also saw two kangaroos bouncing off into the bush and two amazing red spotted ladybugs. I often see tiny green tree frogs, and bumpy grey frogs. We have regular visits from birds of all kinds including the uniquely Australian kookaburras, cockatoos, galahs, and parrots of many hues.

Having a snake in the garden, is a small price to pay for the privilege of seeing all the other wildlife almost as close. I love it here