All Creatures Great and Small

I am a sucker for animals – there are not many I don’t like. I’d even rather relocate a spider than kill it.

The ones we officially own, like the cat and chickens are spoiled silly. Pretty sure Pip runs the house –

Although he has to put up with small indignities –

The chickens get premium scraps, as well as cakes baked for them –

Seed blocks made for them –

Proper funerals if they fall off the perch-

Admittedly they also have to put up with occasional indignities –

We unofficially share our place with possums –

And a cheeky rabbit –

We had an exciting drama once with a 4 foot tiger snake that decided our bathroom was the best place to hang out!! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came home and saw it gliding into the bathroom!! Pip was on the bench just watching it and I was desperately hoping he wasn’t going to pounce, as I was going to have to go after him and that wasn’t going to end well for any of us!

I saw it go under the bath, so I went in and scooped up the cat, closed the door and ran to wake up Jeff (who was on nightshift) so I could share the news. Bleary eyed he dutifully came to the bathroom, we opened the door and there’s me grovelling about on the floor with a torch looking for the damn snake – and then I look up! Draped over the towel rack like an ornament!!

Well, you can’t have a bloody great poisonous snake cavorting about the bathroom, so I did some phoning about to get a snake person in to catch and relocate it.

They eventually arrived (two and a half hours later – and with only one loo in the house, I had to make other arrangements as even though I like snakes, I wasn’t ready to sit on the toilet with it lurking nearby!) From memory it only cost about $40 for the mother & son team to come in and do their thing! Money well spent and we immediately blocked up the offending hole in the bathroom!

Of course we get lots of interesting insects – ranging from your usual grasshopper-

through to the weird and wonderful –

But todays unusual animal drama came from a lizard. There are a lot of them scampering about out the back at the moment.

I was finally getting around to cleaning up the back veranda, and I found this poor fellow stuck to a bit of packing tape that was hanging off a box!!

It probably took about an hour of delicate work with a cotton bud and a jar of warm water – I dunked him in a few times…

I think I would have cried if I killed him, so we took it pretty slow – and the trick was keeping the newly unstuck limbs from resticking themselves on again! He could feel the freedom coming along and got quite wiggly (understandably) once a few feet were loose.

I thought he may like his new found freedom in the herb garden among the oregano-

Well that was my good deed for the day – I even got the veranda done (with a bit of help from the wonderful husband)

Hope your day was great!

Cheers