Hurray for Pussy!

you could have found another and bred them. think of all the (insert aussie bill names here) you could have made...

for a moment I thought the title was hooray for hairy pussy.

and I was thinking you snubbed a bunch of brazilian kitties...

Oh...

I forgot to be polite and add that I am just this side of ambivalent that you survived. but very glad no harm came to your cat or kids. do you have goats?.

you are at least attempting to be more sane and civil this go 'round.

I bet you miss Steve Irwin. he woulda picked right up on that spider, by crikey...

(is by crikey proper?)

Do I look like a goat herder ? And I am always civil unless someone wants a fight .

Steve Irwin would have wrestled it and knocked over my TV .

I heard that funnel webs can jump pretty far. And they always land with their fangs forward ready to deliver. Any truth to that? My trip to Sydney ios on the line. My wife wont go anywhere where spiders are considered livestok.

Actually no spider can jump unless it is all downhill . Funnel Webs strike so hard and fast they knock themselves over . Given their starting position for a strike, where they rear back at 90 degrees to their abdomen, they appear to have jumped . The Sydney Funnel Web is slightly less venomous then the one we have up here . The difference is rather mute . Neither are very aggressive, and given the pop of Sydney they cant be too dangerous or we would have people bit every week .

I once saw a daddy long legs spider attack a funnel web on my back steps when I was posted to Sydney . I gave the funnel web a disorientating whack and the Daddy long legs moved in for the kill . It rolled the funnel web up in thread and then went up and down the wall several times attaching a tow thread . It then pulled the Funnel web up the wall and ate it . Quite an hours entertainment for someone who wanted to sit in the winter sun first thing in the morning .

You will recognise a Funnel Web because it is as black as man can make black paint . Nothing exists in nature which is that black . We have very dark brown spiders, but you will know a Funnel Web if you see one . The ones we have here, are jet black with a brown abdomen and two light grey bands on the junction of their legs and body .

I haven't seen a funnel web in Sydney for years - but then I live in a fairly populated area and don't have a swimming pool - which can attract them.

When I lived on the western outskirts of Sydney, in a new housing estate, the telephone installers disturbed a huge nest of the things. A bit scary there for a while!

great news. I need to tone that down a bit to show my wife.(As I said she is a major big time arachniphobiac)
In the fall we have these Orb SPiders that weave webs in gardens and around plants and they are pretty big and are neat colored with black and yellow rings. They are pretty much harmless but will impart a"getoutta here" sting that causes a welt because of the "Meat tenderizers" they have in their bites. SO, my wife has been really studying up on AUstralian spiders and snakes before we plan a trip there in 2013. I like the info that they re pretty non aggressive. Now if you can give me some good news about the Great Brown or Taipan, maybe I can get her calmed down

Well, fm - it depends a bit on exactly where you're going? And the time of the year?
None of these things are much of a risk in the usual tourist places. If you're planning to go bush, the chances change slightly - but are still not much of an issue.

If you plan to go swimming in north Queensland and/or the Northern Territory, crocodiles are the risk.

Sharks have been pretty aggressive this past summer - another death yesterday.

Still all very low risk.

Unfortunately there is no good news about the King Brown or Taipan except their preferred habitat is away from people . The last man to die from a Taipan was running flat out away from it and got bit 10 times . It was the mating season and it was a 12' long female . As for King Browns, we lost a soldier from one . He didn't do his sleeping bag check before climbing in after a late night picket duty .

We nearly lost a soldier due to a Death Adder . It leaped up and struck him with a scratch to the back of his hand so he had no bite mark . He didn't realise and kept walking only to collapse into shock . A very switched on ER team saved him on a hunch .

The good news is the vast majority of our snakes, such as the Black Snake ( a relative of the Cobra that we regard as relatively non-venomous) are quite shy unless molting or mating or laying eggs . I have disturbed many only to have them slink away . But one is naturally aggressive, and that is the Tiger Snake . My daughter had one crawl in through an open window and bite and eat her kitten whilst she was home alone . By the time I got to her place, all I could do was beat the bush to either find it or scare it into not coming back . They are far less aggressive if they have just used their venom . Having Guinea Pigs in the back yard can attract snakes out here in the country .

The only ones that scare me of all our poisonous critters is the Stone Fish and Box Jelly Fish . You wont see them and they are very deadly .

There are too many shark incidents reported as attacks when all they really were was a curious nibble . One incident recently had a surfer coming off the crest and landing on a shark which bit him in self defense and swam away . The genuine shark attacks, ie where a shark has deliberately set out to eat a human, do not end well for the human . No amount of stitches will fix those people . One incident had a man attacked by a Great White . What really happened was the shark swam up and like a baby used its mouth to see what this thing was...having got an awful taste in its mouth after a gentle feel, it swam away . Problem is a gentle feel with that many teeth in a mouth will cause damage .

If the shark thrashers wildly to break off pieces, or if a Great White attacks from below like a speeding train, that is an attack . If there are clear teeth marks with no tearing, that is an exploratory touch .

I have a tooth from a Carchariodon from the Miocene cliffs of MAryland. I was diving for founder and found a whole bunch of the teeth ying in a " current midden" , which is an eddy area in an estuary where heavy tides can run. These current middens will pile up anything of a similar density and at this point there were maybe 8 or 9 Carchariodon megalodon teeth, and several hundred squallus teeth .
I saw killer whales but never a great white other than a fossil great white (carchariadon) jaw in which was taken a photo of a museum curator standing with room to spare.

Ive always loved snakes and am often quite foolhardy around them. From what I hear about all the really poisonous oes pof Australia, I should be more concerned with avoiding them. Id seen a green mamba slither across a series of low bushes in Nigeria and was amazed at how fast they could move. Ive never known that a snake could outrun a human. Do they let you carry shotguns in the bush of AUstralia

By great brown, do you by any chance mean the brown snake?

If so, you'll not see one unless you're very lucky. They are not aggressive ( I have actually picked up a HUGE one by mistake...luckily in the middle...and all it did was head for the hills) and can be avoided by making noise if you are out bush walking, and not walking through long grass in the warmer months of the year.

Taipans are northern...where are you thinking of going?

In late 2013 my one business partner and I will be ON an assignment for a survey of certain areas in Oz and another few other countries of Asia . We are doing a geo survey . Thats about all Ill feel comfy in disclosing. We are hoping to take our wives so we can travel about since itll be about 1 to 2 months . We will be mostly in more remote Oz "along the pie crust" so any treks we take in the interior wil be for holiday reasons. WE will mostly be chartering planes and driving so I dont know where the muse wil lead us. We recognize the size of your land so we arent gonna try to pack in too much this trip. (If we are successful we will have several more trips, sorta like my recent past assignments in Argentina)

I really dont much like too much travel where Im not in charge of means of transp[ort so I am a poor flyer unless its a charter. Thats a waay yet> Ive gotta get a couple of 'COMITY" GEO licenses in a few countries before then so I can ship samples without having some govt agency interveneS.

My Ozian niece gave me a book for Christmas once by Bill Bryson, the English travel writer, about his first trip to Oz. Boiled down, the theme of the book was that everything in Australia that walks, slithers, flies, swims, or photosynthesizes, is somehow trying to kill you. If you step off the concrete at any time, you're doomed. Very interesting book.

"In a SUnburned Country" was required reading for my partner whose never been out of the country since the 80's.

I think Brysons thesis was. more correctly stated"THat everything in Oz that crawls (etc) WILL kill you" Of course Bryson had overstated the actual danger from black bears in the Appalachians, They usually wont eat you after they kill you.

Well, you must come to Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney!

With that much warning I hope Margo, Olga and myself would be able to catch up.....I hope.

It's a HUMOROUS book!