Wildlife

It never ceases to amaze me how many different types of living creatures there are in Australia, even in metropolitan Melbourne. 

We live a measly 2km away from Flinders Street Station, yet have possums in the trees in our road at night and bats in the trees of the park we have to cross to walk home from our tram stop. 

Crows, magpies, mini magpies (not sure what these are officially called but they look like smaller versions of the aforementioned Collingwood mascots), some cockatoo-looking parrot things and lots of other weird and wonderful birds abound.  On a walk through the botanical gardens on Saturday afternoon we spied large numbers of eels and long-necked turtles in the shallows of the Ornamental Lake.  It's turtle breeding season at the moment and apparently these little guys (or should I say "girls") seek alterative water sources for egg laying.  We saw one toddling across the grass as we were leaving the lake.  I'll have to get the photos off S's iphone to post here.

What I really can't get over is the abundance of insects!  Flies, flies and more flies!  Luckily our block was fitted with fly screens this morning, although from the number of flying ants currently circling our dining room light - it doesn't look like they're working.  Note that the windows are also closed.  How these buggers are getting in is anyone's guess.  I kinda feel sorry for them though, they only live for a day or two so to spend a precious 3 or 4 hours circling a dining room light can't be the best use of their already limited time, can it?

There was quite a lot of excitement about a locust plague heading towards Melbourne a couple of weeks ago as well.  They ride down from the outback on the hot desert winds in their hundreds of thousands.  Not many got to us, I think the North Western suburbs of Melbourne were worst hit.  A bit of a anti-climax really.  I was expecting something out of... well, the Bible.

And last week I was drawn to, albeit sceptical of, an artical I read in the mX (free evening paper available at train stations) last week about a kayaker who was repeatedly attacked by a giant (his words), black water snake in the Yarra River (which runs about 200m from our house).  Only a couple of swift blows to the head were enough to make the beast retreat.  At one stage I was thinking about buying a kayak... maybe not!  It's wild out here!

Let there be light... and flying ants