Deadly Australia.

The death adder is not very colourful-most people who are bitten by it have trodden on it, mainly because it's short thick, doesn't move much, and usually resembles a tree branch sitting on the ground.

Or they should make sounds not to be forced to attack.

snakes are also either deaf or really hard of hearing. sO, we need to fit them with little hearing aids

They feel vibrations in the earth - we walk heavily...

Looks at spiders and runs away screaming!!!!!

I had a pleasure to meet a sleeping bear. picking mushrooms (for food, thankyouverymuch) i came upon a medow and saw a beehive in the ground. i stood there, scratching my head: never saw bees digging their hives IN the ground! it slowly dawned on me, that a bear must have ripped it off from a tree and burry it for later. looked around, and sure enough, there was a sleeping bear under the trees some 20 feet away! i snuck away and then ran like mad. my man came back to the cottage from a long bikeride so hungry, he wasn't even listening. all he wanted was food. didn't speak to him for the rest of the afternoon!

I was once bitten by a brown recluse. At first there was a boil, which quicly grew to about the diameter of a penny. I treated it with magnesium sulfate (Epsom Salts) at first, not knowing the origin. That same evening, however, as i shook out the bed linen, i found, and killed the brown recluse. For about four or five days, the boil seemed to be stabilized, and i had hope of it going down (it was about midway between the knee and the ankle) soon, so that i could continue my therapy for my other leg--i had torn the meniscus over the left patella. At the end of that week, i began to feel ill, as though i were suffering the most rapid onset of influenze i'd ever experienced. By the following morning, my right leg had swollen to nearly twice its normal size below the knee. I was completely hobbled for two weeks. I don't know if the Epsom Salts had helped or not, i've no idea what the normal course of toxic reaction is for a brown recluse bite.

My friend who was bitten by the tiny redback was hospitalized for 3 weeks, unconsious. She then spent another 3 weeks suffering from sweats and halucinations. She was bitten on the ear. She put a pair of earphones on while driving a tractor. They found her in a field going round and round a an unending circle.
It's odd that such a tiny thing could be sooo poisonous, but apparently they have enough venom to down a horse, so she's lucky.

Earphones? Oh my! Redbacks are very pacific spiders - you pretty much have to grab them or sit on them to make them bite. I guess being clamped to an ear was enough! It is the gels who are poisonous.

Ain't it always . . .

In fact, with all this stuff about deadly beasties - I have not seen a snake in the wild since I was about 16, the redbacks keep to the back sheds - what scares me are the bees (I am allergic) and the damned European wasps, which got in here, sadly. They are so aggressive!!!!

I used to have brown snakes in the backyard when I lived out west, on the outskirts of Sydney! My place backed on to a bush reserve. They can be a tad vicious - a bushfire brigade fellow warned us to keep out of the bush once, after a bushfire had gone through - as the snakes would be angry! Once came at me, out of the grass, as I was doing some weeding once.

But after they killed 2 cats, I decided it was time to move!

That place had funnel webs in the garden, too!

eeeeek!

We had black widow spiders in west Los Angeles. I was never a big fan..

The Lesser Two-finned Land-Shark:



Scanning the nearby area around its burrow, this rapacious killer will hide until it leaps out overwhelming its prey with a blood-curdling "Hmmmmmmmmm?".

OK, listen, I give you all ten points for this, very good, Mr. S.

Please step ahead.. yes, cross the ramp....

Say whatcha will about bears, you're never going to find one in your shoe in the morning.

The black bears are not a big problem in California. I used to backpack a lot at the fringe of Yosemite Nat'l Park where they relocated the "problem bears" from the populated part of the park. The ones who see people as a source of food are definitely riskier -- which I'm assuming would be most of 'em on the east coast of the U.S. Still, I never had an adverse encounter out there, and was generally much more wary of mountain lions than of bears.

Awwwww!!!!

No, no, "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?".

Must be the cabin-fever. Eaten any of your fellow residents yet?

Hohum.....

am I nuts?
I've always wanted to go to Australia... I've been reading up about it and what to avoid and what not to... but Wilso's posting scares the !@#$% out of me! I mean obviously it can't be that bad since Australians are doin ok... but do they have some sort of 6th sense about these creatures or something? I wonder if we have dangerous creatures in the US too and just don't know it... like in Arizona or Montana or something. I mean I live in New York City I guess if I can survive here I can survive anywhere... but the dangers are quite different!

I bought a book for $6 about what to do if stung, bitten, etc and what the risks are where. Please someone tell me that if I come to Australia for a few months next (Aussie) summer that I will make it out alive!

What the heck is a wallabie, by the way?