Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

:frown:Well pest control came out this morning and sprayed the outside of the house, the roof and the colourbond fencing.

Within ten minutes heaps of redbacks, fat redbacks, baby redbacks - redbacks a plenty came out and started to die, big fat hairy black chunky house-spiders came out of nowhere - they fell off the roof and on to the ground, I have never seen so many redbacks, we killed one last night in the dogs kennel.

He sprayed our shed for us as well, $120 well spent I reckon.:thumbsup:

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

Mate of mine got bitten in the hand six times by a redback spider last week. His hand swelled up like one of those big clapper hands you see at sporting events. He's lucky as the doctor said he could have had a much worse reaction to the bite.

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

How did he manage to let the same spider bite him six times? Is he a sloth?

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

He was moving some canoes and was unable to drop the canoe he was moving, as it would have squashed him.

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

Now that's shitty circumstance if ever I heard of it?

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

One of my work colleagues directed me to this youtube video just today - it may help (you may have seen it before though) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEeq5qGh8I :rofl::rofl:

We have lived here for years and only find redbacks in the woodpile and even then, not really very many. We would have seen less than a dozen snakes in all that time and all out in the bush - mainly red bellied blacks but the occasional brown. We do have a blue tongue lizard living in our suburban garden and we have also had a dragon of some kind scuttling through.

DS2 has been bitten by a redback - made him feel rather ill for a while and needed a few hours obs in A & E before they let him go - the darned thing was trying to master the breaststroke at the AIS and DS met him on the lane rope:rofl:

I have been bitten by a bull ant - moral, dont wear thongs on bushwalks - and it was excruiciating in the extreme. My FIL was so seriously allergic to them that he had to carry an epipen with him whenever he went in the bush - as his hobby was growing Aus natives that was pretty much all the time!

I am most scared of white tails because they are very common and they bite and they have a nasty tendency to cause necrosis of the flesh around the bite - our neighbour had such a serious ulcer they were thinking of skin grafting.

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

We are considering a move to Oz and i hate snakes and i am not particularly keen on spiders, so i am slightly concerned about them as have 2 young kids. This gives me re-assurance that probably not so much of a problem as you think.:)

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Sorry to bring a bit of a downer. We live in a new unit in eastern suburbs of melbourne. Wife was bitten a couple of weeks after we got here hanging out the washing (wearing sandals). No big deal, just a small sting/bite (thought it was an ant). Left it for a couple of days and it got infected. Ended up overnight in emergency on a drip! Plastic surgeon had a look as it was blistered and pussy and said it was most likely a white tail (necrotis is from the infection, not the bite). She is taking some flak at work with Aussies laughing that they have never been bitten and she has after a couple of weeks in Oz (good natured though)

See probably one a week in the house. Some big, but some (more worrying quite small). Have surface sprayed and mortein bombed, but they still seem to get in. Also see what seem to be black house spiders and saw one redback in the garden. Couple of huntsmans, but don't mind anything like that that just have a painful bite, as its not really worse than wasps or bees being around(unless allergic !)

I was never bothered about all this before we came, but now feel a real paranoia.

We really like bush walking, but seen no snakes yet

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My wife works at Virgin Blue at Bowen Hills, and they have some little redback families camped out at the front of the building

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

MY God!?!

After reading this thread i want to cry!!!!

I have a real fear of spiders, snakes no problem as such. But SPIDERS AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to live in Melbourne, can anyone tell me what it's like for spiders? I know a daft question as i already know the answer. Some people will have come across them others not. However i was interested to here that you can have your house and garden sprayed, what is this???? how long dose it last??? cost etc????. Or do i just wear a suit of armour around the place or big steel boots to jump on any i see. How do people sleep at nights with these things lurking around. I worry for the kids, at home they are used to just leaving there clothes and toys all over the place and not worrying to check them.

regards

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

There will always be a chance of spiders in Victoria. But a very small chance they will cause you damage of any sort.

That said I did find a small white tail on the shower head outside over the weekend.

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

In my personal experience I think that Australia is a much safer place for Snakes that England, I repeat, "In my personal experience".

I've only ever been bitten by a poisonous snake once in my life, and that was in Cornwall, where I ended up spending one week in hospital due to the snake bite.

Been pretty safe from them here in my 18 years in Australia... :thumbup:

Re: Hazardous wildlife
 

Was it an Adder?

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You get a pest control company to spray the house once a year. Mine cost $170 last week.

It generally lasts for near enough 12 months.

You should see my 12 years old bedroom, clothes everywhere on the floor, but no worries about spiders.
It isn't as a big a problem as some may think.

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It was a big adder !! But I was small at the time... ;)

There have been a few adder bites in the UK recently, I saw something in the paper about it the other week.

Also just googled and saw this headline:
In Australia there are 1000 to 3000 snakebites per year with an annual incidence of about 15 bites per 100,000 of the population.
There are 2 to 4 deaths per year. http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/40001328/

The majority of people who are bitten by snakes will have been bitten by a non-venomous snake.