Introducing Our New Pet

Samina has a cat, Wray and Colleen have cats and a dog, Miko and Shan have a dog, etc, etc. Frankly, we've had it up to here with the never ending stories and updates about their four legged friends. So, if you can't beat'em, join'em...we will no longer be ostracized for not being part of this exclusive club.

How did we join? Well, we are the proud owner of Bo Spangles. We just bought him a brand new plastic home and he seems happy hanging upside down on his lid.

I'll describe him for you. He has eight legs, two chelicera ending in two large fangs, his body is about 3/4 of an inch long and his legs span about 3 inches across his body. He has eight eyes in two rows of four. He's cute but not very cuddly and eats crickets.

By the way, we know he's a he, he has big bulbous palps making him a male huntsman. Here he is in his new home cleaning his fangs before an early evening meal on a cricket:

Deadly Spiders

This post is dedicated to the smaller arachnids that live in our community. Friendly critters such as the white tip, the red back, the brown widow, and the trapdoor spider none of which, despite urban legends to the contrary, are in fact 'deadly.'

First, the white tail (also known as the white tip.) This much maligned spider has been suspected of causing necrotising wounds around the bite area. This means that the victim ends up with ulcerations and lesions around the bite area and, in the worst cases, advanced gangrene resulting in amputation. Recent evidence debates this and seems to point to this spider causing no worse than a very painful bite.

That said, it is only recently that I learned all of that through research. Everyone you meet here tells you how dangerous these spiders are and so far I've seen five of them (three in our house.) One actually crawled into my shorts that were lying on the floor. When I put them on, she crawled down my leg trying to escape. I freaked out because I thought I had narrowly escaped a horrible case of gangrene of the penis leading to the commencement of my career as Androgo-Damo. Turns out, from what 'the authorities say' I had nothing to worry about.

We ended up killing the white tip that you see in the picture anyway because we also learned that they prey solely upon other spiders which are generally good in that they eat all the other nasty bugs.

This little fellow lives just outside our back door and is a trapdoor spider. Trapdoors also have also been the victim of a misleading media and urban legend blitz as they are often mistaken for the very deadly funnel web (the only truly deadly spider) and have been suspected of killing people in the past. The truth is that their bite, although very painful, causes no severe illness in humans.

They are nighttime spiders and hide during the day. I didnt even know this guy lived there until one night when I was sitting out back and happened to look to my right to see her poking her head out of her funnel home waiting for some misfortunate critter to crawl by. Since then I've been feeding her ants and moths, one such victim you see in the photo. She is super fast and darts out, grabs the victim, and carts it off to her home to be devoured in seconds flat. Glad I'm not a moth.

Last but not least are the 'widow' family of spiders including the red back and the brown widow. The former we have only seen in museums & zoos. The latter I almost put my hand into her web while cleaning our barbeque. I'm pretty sure it was a brown widow as it had the telltale leg patterns and a small white marking on its back. I missed being bit by about an inch and the widow's bite, while not as bad as the redback, is very painful and can cause illness.

I took the photo of the redback you see to the left in the Melbourne museum. She was alive and spinning a very intricate web. The redback can kill small children and will make an adult sick. Their bites are common since it lives in places where human contact is likely - such as urban areas, gardens, tool sheds, etc. So far we have not seen one in the wild.

In a later post I'll discuss two other spider types. One is very cool & unique - the huntsman - of which I've only seen one so far. The other is very scary and deadly - the sydney funnel web - which I have yet managed to avoid. Thank God.

For now I'll leave you with the deadliest spider we have come across to date - redbacks that have come into contact with radioactive waste and grow to massive size as a result. Nicole narrowly escaped with her life after I successfully beat it back with an oversized broom stick.

hot rods and huntsmans

we're in ulladulla right now, a cute little beachside town south of sydney, sleeping in a real bed (hoorah!), thanks to damo's friends, tony and jo. tony is a wine buff so we drank lots of kick ass wine last night and celebrated the day after my birthday (happy birthday me!). after this contact with the world over via internet, we're going to hit the beach again in our attempt to get rid of our sun reflecting pale white skin!

the past weekend was spent in canberra, the nation's capital. it's this neat designed city so it's full of green spaces (in theory, but was bone dry so they were all brown spaces), random public art and beautiful or weird buildings.

highlight: war memorial--a big, thorough, interesting, spectacular museum covering all of australia's involvement in what seems to be every major conflict in the past two hundred years.

lowlight: we chose the one weekend that sees canberra host a souped up car festival. we ended up on a crowded tent field in a caravan park with rowdies, young and old, who partied and revved their engines ALL night long. by night three we were cranky with no sleep.

wildlife update: damo killed a big ass spider outside the tent--probably a non-venomous huntsman but we didn't know at the time. damo tried to shoo it away but it reared up and tried to attack the twig (!!) he was using so he smooshed it under his shoe. we're reading a book on aussie's most dangerous animals so are in a heighted state of paranoia right now with anything creeping, crawling or swimming. we've seen a white tip spider in the bathroom of a friend's house already.

lots more to write about--it was australia's hottest new year's day on record (45.5 degrees outside of sydney!)--but we'll update once we hit geelong.

the nico