We're Under Siege!

They are coming to get us...

The creatures...

Creeping in from every direction...

Playing on our weaknesses...

Closer and closer they come...

AND THEY ARE TOTALLY FREAKING ME OUT!!!!!

Over 9 days we were beset with some of the most hideous happenings around this place.

Episode One... Saturday lunchtime July 31st.
The boys and I are going stir crazy.  I can be inside the house all day and not worry most day.  But I hate the Saturdays that Wolf has to work.  Those days send me round the twist, I count the hours until the shop closes and then I start to listen like a crazed woman for the sound of his car coming down the street.  So we I decided to get out in the yard and do something domestic.  I had been getting sick of seeing all the weeds growing into the boys sandpit so I thought I'd go and pull them out.  I set up the playpen with a large towel underneath it so my baby couldn't choke on nature and need an ambulance ride to the hospital like his big brother did, put the baby in it and set to work.  I kept my eyes peeled for my old friend but he was nowhere to be seen.  I got through that and looked around, I might as well keep going since the bin was only half full of weeds.  I decided to tackle the bindiis (bindy-eyes) that are trying to take over our yard.  So there I was right next to the playpen with my baby in it pulling out great heaps of bindiis and weedy vines hand over fist and shoving them down into this bin.  I reach out and grab a handful of vines and start to pull... two great big hair arachnid legs reach out menacingly towards me... I let go of the vines, step back and bend over to have a better peek... it's a whopping great bird spider ready to suck my brains out like a milkshake and then follow it with a monkey brain chaser.  Well, that was the end of that little bit of domesticity... I grabbed the baby and came inside... and then called from the relative safety of my house to the two big boys playing in the sandpit that it was probably getting a bit to hot outside and they should come in now.  Wolf came home and couldn't find the spider where I said it had been... he did find the sucked-dry skin of a big old frog tossed aside by a bird spider like last nights take-away container.  Did I mention this was RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW????  I did  NOT sleep well that night!

Episode Two... Sunday evening August 1st.
Wolf has said there is a smell around... I have little sense of smell so I'm not much good at locating the source of these things.  I figure it can't be that bad since he is just complaining about it and not getting down and finding it.  Eventually I go to put Monkey to bed and it's too much for Wolf, he decides to empty the dishwasher because he figures if the smell is in the kitchen then getting the dirty dishes out of the way will go a ways to finding the stink.  The next thing I know he busts into the bedroom where I am feeding the Monkey and thrusts a camera LCD screen in my face all the while gagging and heaving.  I can't quite make out what is on the screen but I can tell it's inside the dishwasher.  Monkey has been well and truly woken up so I take him out to find out what is going on.  It was indeed the inside of my dishwasher... the dishwasher that I had put on just before lunch the day before... for about 30 hours the contents of that dishwasher had sat undisturbed bar the removal of a couple of pieces of cutlery and two breakfast bowls... and there, on the bottom of the dishwasher was the body of a rather large green tree frog... or at least he was once green, before he decided to slow-boil himself in our dishwasher!  I'll spare you the photo... I can't stand to look at it again to load it on here I'm not sure if you're eating or not so I'll just leave it on the hard drive.  At this point I realised that I had used one of the breakfast dishes that had been removed and I started gagging too...  Eventually we managed to slow the gagging enough for Wolf to remove the trays and try to lift out the soft boiled frog.  But it wouldn't lift.  It turned out it was baked on to the bottom of the dishwasher.  I'll spare you the details and just tell you that a barbecue/paint scraper was involved in the removal of the frog and our dishwasher has never been cleaner... and we washed all those dishes again and try not the think about the ones we used!

Episode Three... Monday midmorning August 9th.
I'm sitting at the computer right beside the back door.  I hear a noise, kind of like the breeze blowing through the long grass at the back fence... but kind of different.  I've heard this noise before... My entire body does NOT want to move but not knowing is worse... I get up, I look out the back door across the patio to the grass... nothing.  Thank goodness, I could have sworn that was snake noise.  I go to sit back down and catch a glimpse of something move right at my feet (on the other side of the screen)... a two metre long snake is slithering past my back door!  My mind goes into bladder control mode and then reminds myself to get the camera so I can look at photos when I am trying to identify it later...

Yep, that's a snake.

creeping creepily across my patio.

This one is just because I thought two photos might not be enough for you.

I chased it along to the next room and took more photos through the laundry door but they didn't work and it scared it and it scooted off into the grass.  Uh oh, I didn't like knowing it was on my patio but I REALLY didn't like not knowing where it was at all!  I rang Wolf at work, shaking like a leaf, and had a little freak out on the phone.  I spotted it over by the kids sandpit and had insane thoughts of grabbing one of their nets and getting out and catching it.  I didn't think those thoughts for very long.  I watched as it crept all over the boys toys and explored our yard.  Wolf told me to make some noise so it knew it wasn't welcome.  I had a baby asleep so I wasn't about to make some noise for an animal that doesn't even appear to have ears.  I remembered something about stamping on the ground when bushwalking will let snakes know that you are around and you are bigger than them... sounded good.  I put on my gumboots, tucked my jeans into them and went to go outside... I couldn't see it anymore.  Hang on, there he is... gingerly I open the door, he doesn't move... I go out onto the patio and stomp my little feet for all I'm worth... he still doesn't move... I edge over to the grass to get a better look... Hang on, if that's a stick then WHERE IS THE SNAKE?????  I hurry back inside and determine to never leave my house again!  After all, he's probably curled up on top of my garage roller door waiting to drop on my head.  I had a little vent on facebook and my sweet, kind cousin let me know that he was probably in my house by now... I went to close the window over the screen with the hole in it and shove a towel under the door into the garage.  I found that the garage door was open... he could be in my house!  Cousin P then proceeded to suggest what he might be doing in my house and give me photos of babies and snakes.  Yeah, I needed that.  My other male cousin from that side of the family Cousin A kindly suggested that I shake out my quilt before I go to bed because snakes like to make themselves comfy like that.  Thanks.  I was a neurotic mess by the time Wolf got home.  Monkey and I practically flew to the car to do the school and kindy run that afternoon.  Hooooo boy! I'm still getting the hibbidy jibbidies thinking about it now!

So anyone want to come and visit?

This is on top of the spider trapping me in the shower not too long ago.

They say that all of this nature and junk is a sign of a healthy environment.  Healthy, shmealthy, bring on the smog and pollution, I don't want all this nature getting so close to me!

Okay, you'll have to see yourself out now, I'm just going to go and curl up foetal position in a corner and rock back and forth for a bit.

Striking Fear...

I have a few fears.

Totally rational of course.

Like the one about a snake dropping down onto my head when I open the garage roller door... I may have mentioned this one or two times before.

I also have one where I get in the shower and close the shower screen and there is a spider between me and my only exit.  I have in the past comforted myself with the fact that this is highly unlikely.  Really, with all the places in our house that a spider could decide to live is it really going to be hanging around the shower?

So, I don't need to worry about my weird snake fear taking all the joy out of opening the garage door.  It's more of a mundane task that must be accomplished to go out in the car, not much joy in it.  Until recently I have been able to push aside my fear of a spider trapping me in the shower (and turning me into a Mummy McTavish Milkshake and sucking my brains out) and make the most of my limited time alone in the shower.  Okay, I'm not alone, I just have a really good excuse for not doing whatever it is they are asking me to do... "sure sweetie, I'll pull those Lego bits apart but they might just go down the drain if I drop them... how about you go ask daddy"...

But you see, about a month ago my life changed forever.  It happened.  My nightmare became a reality.  I waltzed merrily into the bathroom ready to enjoy a lovely long shower.  The big boys were with the grandies and the baby was asleep.  I was free to shave my legs, wash my hair, whatever.  I heard a little whistle noise come from outside and my brain teased me "ooooh, there's a bird spider gonna get you and suck your brains out".  It put me a little on edge to say the least, don't you hate it when your own brain teases you like that?  So I hopped into the shower and closed the screen and because my brain had me on edge I checked the screen.  There she was.  About a hand span across.  Hiding up in the runners of the screen.  Ready to pounce and pin me down while she waited for her Bird Spider buddies to come and get me (she was only a Huntsman so she would have needed help to turn me into a milkshake).

I was stuck.

I gingerly reached out for the handle... I had a plan.  I would carefully slide the door back and creep out and then run screaming like a little girl into Wolf who would go and kill the beast for me.

I stopped.

If I rolled the screen back it would move towards her... then she might move towards me!

Then I did my calculations a little better, I'm not really as skinny as I like to think I am... I would have to roll the screen OVER THE TOP OF HER.  Then she would not only be between me and my exit, she would be between me and my exit and she'd be CRANKY!

But my only other option was to stay in the shower with her and she was looking at me... and I wasn't wearing anything, but since I don't think spiders can die of laughter that option was out of the question.

So, in one swift movement I threw the door back gave a quick glance to make sure she wasn't halfway through the air ready to attack me and I jumped out of the shower and ran screaming like a little girl into Wolf to plead with him to rescue me.  He did.  She wont be coming back.

But one month on, I still can't relax.  If my nightmare has become reality once, what's to stop it happening again?  I spend my showers glancing nervously around looking for her spider buddies coming to get revenge.  I know they are there, watching, waiting, drooling at the thought of Mummy McTavish Milkshake...

Peer Pressure

Hi there, If you've popped across here because you've clicked the link in Lisa's post today under the misguided impression that you were going to be taken to a site all about Australia's vast beauty and desolate nothingness then I'm pretty sure the first post you see shouldn't contain huge amounts of ranting about the fact that my son wont poop so I thought I'd better get something else on here quick smart!

If you have come across from there please make yourself at home and start cleaning up a bit, the washing needs to be taken out of the machine, the dishes need to be loaded in the dishwasher, and the lounge room needs a good clean... leave a comment.  I'm pretty okay with most of this blogging stuff but I just can't figure out that stat counter thingo and how to tell who came from where and all that sorta stuff so please say hi, even if you are so scared by my rantings that you are never ever going to return.

If you would like to know about Australia might I point you here to see some of our local wildlife.  If you would like to learn the language my Australia Day posts from last year and this year may totally confuse you help you out.  Info on crocodiles that may or may not be accurate can be found here and here.  Feel like being thankful you don't have our spiders?  then go here.  Want to meet some more of our wildlife and find out about our day to day interactions with them? then this is the post for you.  One last little known beast that calls Australia home can be found here.

So, I hope you have fun finding out about our beautiful country.  One exciting piece of news is that we seem to have a man eating bird making his home in our back yard.  We are strangely excited by this.

Here's the big boys pointing to him (what? he's a man eating bird, not a boy eating bird!) under our poor little mango tree.

and here is a really rather dodgy close up of him.  He looks ferocious doesn't he?

So, kick aside the dried up bodies of our beautiful native green tree frogs and Barra frogs that have managed to get inside the house and not back out again (or perhaps had their insides turned into milkshakes and sucked out by those freaky spiders) and pop out onto the back patio to check out the lucky one that I rescued this morning, lovingly removing the dust bunnies from him and leaving him sit in a little dish of water to revive... or possibly leaving him sit in a dish as a meal for a snake.  (this link will bring up all the other snake related posts for you... you're welcome).

So, I'm sure this was all a part of some devious plan by Lisa to get me to do a new post and I have given in to the peer pressure by recycling all the old stuff and disguising it as new... clever aren't I?  She'll never notice.  Perhaps one day I will get a chance to do a post about our other native animals but everyone knows about our beautiful ones.  The Koalas, the Kangaroos, the Emu and the Cassowary.  Did you know Wombats poop is square?  Oh, man, I've turned it into another post about poop.  Time to go.

Another Spider Story...

Could also be titled "Wolf's family thinks I'm nuts"

This one's for you Mrs Nurse Boy

Cast your mind back if you would to April(ish) 2004. What were you doing? I was a little bit pregnant and headed off for a visit with Wolf's family in New South Wales. We spent a few days with his parents then we jumped in their car and headed further south to Mum-me's clan for a dedication service for Teddy (I'm remembering that right aren't I?).

We got a wee bit down the road and that was when I saw it. A huntsman. A BIG huntsman. Inside the car. It scooted behind Saint Bernard's foot and the pedals, out of sight. I believe I most likely went quite pale at this point and I know I gripped Wolf's thigh for dear life and hissed into his ear something about a spider that was going to eat us all and we would never make it to our destination. Wolf knew that the only way to get my nails out of his thigh was to do something, anything about the spider. He very calmly asked his dad to stop and see if he could find the massive lurking beast that had only been seen by me. They couldn't see it. It was MASSIVE and they couldn't see it. Saint Bernard very kindly offered to go home and get some spray to see if they could do anything more about the beast and at least keep the spray in the car should it show itself again. I believe I may have muttered some gibberish that indicated that I would appreciate that very much. Wolf managed to convince me that the spider couldn't consume us all in the three streets it would take to get back so I shouldn't walk back to the house and that of course they would find it and we would all be safe for the rest of the trip. I just about walked to Canberra. They never found that beast, I can still see it now if I close my eyes real tight. I can see it's big long legs all hairy and creepy, scooting up out of sight and it's 8 beady little eyes mocking me that I would now know it was there for the entire trip and no one else would get to see him and they would forever doubt that I had seen anything at all. I doubted myself for a time too... but at night, when it's quiet, I can still hear him taunting me, teasing me, and I know then that he was there, creeping around the car while I travelled those miles with 3 companions that I could see and 1 that was invisible to all but me...

So, sleep well tonight.

On with other stuff.

I bought my kids sporks at Anaconda the other day... seemed like a good idea at the time. Until I got one up close after I left and realised that it should be called a kspork. It isn't just a spoon and fork on opposite ends of a stick. It has a knife too. Guess where their intelligent designer decided to put the knife.... ON THE SIDE OF THE FORK! So with each mouthful my kids can slice their cheek open just a little bit more. I'd take a photo but they are still in the car and the car is watching the football. Good thing that designer wasn't God... we'd probably have noses on our backsides or something like that!

Two of my sweet friends took me out for birthday coffee today. It was great. Lion was at kindy so I only had Dragon with me. At one point the conversation turned to stealing kids noses. I commented that we take their noses and then stick them to our backside and... um... pass wind on them. I believe from their reactions that this isn't something that other families do. We also swap body parts around, it quite traumatises the kids when I steal their mouth and swap it with one of my ears so they can't eat anything anymore. Is this normal?

We were heading off to church on Sunday when Lion discovered something in the grass... it was this little fella.

Lion went to pick it up! I kinda freaked out! It looked dead but I couldn't tell for sure. It was dead, I realised that it was cast off from a kookaburras lunch or something and was missing a bit of his tail. We had some fun later in the day taking close up photos of our new *dead* friend. Although my poor old camera doesn't do too well with the close up thing.

The boys also got busy with some masking tape, chalk and a cardboard box. This is their boat.

See the outboard motor there on the back???

And it's got a steering wheel for Lion to go cruising for chicks along the river.

And a number plate on the front??? Okay, it's not exactly an accurate representation of a boat but I think it's the best boat this family will ever own.

Bird Spiders

Ah, Momstheword wants to know about Bird Spiders... you can read all about my exciting interactions with them here. But for some more information I offer you...

THE MUMMY McTAVISH GUIDE TO FREAKY BIG SPIDERS

Cute isn't she? Yeah, I don't think so either. Bird Spiders are also known as Australian Tarantulas to give you an idea of their general appearance. I have an eye witness account of a dinner plate sized one crawling into the "smallest room" while the loo was in use. I'd say that's the best place to be if you see one of these guys because they do make you want to... um... evacuate your bowels (being polite). They don't have scientific evidence that they eat birds (although this Australian spider obviously does) but what is scientific evidence? Do they throw a lame sparrow at it and if it gobbles it down it can keep the bird eating label and if it just gets cranky they taunt it by re-naming it The Australian Whistling Spider. I can hear the "scientists" laughing now... "haha, that'll show the big pansy spider... we'll give it a girly name since it can't even eat a bird". It can kill a doberman (I don't want to know how they got that scientific proof) so I'm figuring I'd rather not have one nip me, and I certainly wont be taunting one... well, not again, I didn't know what it was capable of last time I did that.

Around here they probably feast on our frogs (kinda like the snakes do) apparently their venom kills the creature then gets down to business digesting the innards of the animal while still in it's skin so that the spider can just suck all the froggy goodness out like a milkshake, sorry, frogshake. Sounds like fun, hey?

They can jump too. You can just see a spider the size of a VW Beetle pouncing after me ready to fang me and turn me into an MMM (Mummy McT Milkshake). Can you tell I'm freaked out by them?

Momstheword, the best time for a visit to North Queensland is now! Not too hot, not to cool, should I make up a bed for you?

The Puppet Masters and some random goodness

I needed to distract my kids from the fact that I was neither feeding them or letting them watch TV this afternoon so I pulled out a little trick I have been thinking of trying for a little while. We turned the long couch around and we made it our puppet theatre! The boys had a blast. Unfortunately it wasn't the mummy-less fun that I expected it to be. First they needed someone to be the audience, then they actually expected the audience to pay attention. Then they needed a wee bit of mediation between some diva puppets. Finally they demanded a mummy performance... I'd just like to say I had them in stitches! Apparently I'm quite the comedian when I have my hand shoved up the backside of a small furry native animal.

Lots of other random bits of excitement happened today... We had a little incident at playgroup this morning. I was on set up so I was there early and a friend turned up with her two little boys and as I was pulling stuff out of the cupboard she very calmly tapped me on the arm and said "a spider just crawled under your shoe" I figured from her calm exterior that it was a daddy long legs or a garden spider. I stepped back and lifted my foot. This thing was the size of a small car! it was at least a foot between the eyes and after I freaked out and did "the spider dance" I put my foot between it's eyes... and all over the rest of it's creepy crawly body. I detest anything that can move without making a sound. So then it was dead and neither of us would move its still twitching body from the floor but figured it's probably not the best thing to do leaving it there with little babies turning up any minute so I went and got the minister from his office and asked him to remove the monster. I don't think he believed me that it shrunk incredibly when I stood on it. I asked my friend why she was so calm when it was such a massive creepy spider... "well it was your foot it was under, not mine" Yeah, thanks.

We were singing "He's got the whole world in His hands" this afternoon and we were putting in some of the Colin words then I sang "He's got the Mummies and the Babies in His hands, He's got the..." waited for Lion to pick the next line... "fishies and the Daddies in His hands" Yeah, I was expecting more like "the Daddies and the big kids" but obviously the fishies rank right up there too :)

Dragon survives on breakfast. Some days he doesn't eat much breakfast and I worry that he'll be passing out before dinner time (when he doesn't eat much anyway). Today he did his "I don't want lunch" thing and I did my "I'm gonna trick you into eating" thing. "Want some lunch, maybe a sausage?" "no, I not ungry" "okay, what about a little sandwich?" "okay" "what would you like on it?" "um... I like a big sandwich on it" So, how to sneakily be hungrier than you want to let on...

We have one of those little toilet seat things with the ladder up the front and the kid size seat that sits over the top. I took it off the toilet today as I flushed it for Lion and thought that I had accidentally dunked part of it in the flushing water... yuck. So when I went into the loo later and saw some big water drops on the floor I figured I must have swished some out. Then I thought it might be a bit too much water for what I thought I had done and there was no puddle where the seat would have dripped after I put it against the wall. I then noticed that Wolf's seed catalogue was rather damp and I realised Lion had been to the loo since then so I tried another avenue of questioning... "lion did you miss the toilet when you did a wee before?" "no mummy" "did the toilet splash when you flushed it?" "no mummy" Mummy has another horrifying thought "Lion did you drop daddy's catalogue in the toilet?" "no, um, yes mummy" "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?" "I wanted to read it while I was going to the toilet" "BUT YOU WERE DOING A WEE" "yeah" "YOU WERE STANDING UP" "I know, and I dropped it in" "okay, how about you don't read when you are doing a wee, if you want to read while you wee you need to sit down to do your wee" "okay mummy".