markeh

Moneypen,
No lounging on the grass then

Bye
Mark

Jacqui

Yes you're right - we live on 5 acres in Mandurah, semi-rural I suppose, it's not like we're out in the middle of nowhere. When we bought the house last year, the area shown in the photo above had knee-high grass and weeds, millions of leaves everywhere, broken branches from the trees, it was a mess, I don't think the previous owners ventured out this far from the house! We have worked hard getting the place to look tidy. You can now see where you are walking/treading and it's great for the dogs to let off a bit of steam. I always wear boots though, just in case! Immediately surrounding the house are the "formal" lawn areas and flower borders - the mouse spider was running across the lawn in the middle of the day. The dog was very lucky that it didn't bite her on the nose. My daughter rushed to get my camera, while my husband prodded the spider with a stick to get it to rear up and show its fangs. While I'm concentrating on getting focused, he goes and yells out so I leap a mile thinking the thing is on my foot :scared: very funny joke, not!

We encountered just as many spiders living in suburban Halls Head, I'm afraid. Upon moving in, we found a redback indoors. There were always daddy-long-legs in the corners of rooms and cupboards. I found a redback in my trainer (always check your shoes before putting on!). A cockroach once fell out of the air-conditioning vent above me while I was watching telly and landed in my lap. We saw mainly magpies and galahs flying around, but since moving here the birdlife is much more interesting, cockatoos, fairy wrens, robins. And of course, seeing something as big as a racerback lizard sitting on your lawn is just awesome.

My mum discovered the snake when she went to collect eggs from the chook pen. She remembered what I told her - to back off slowly and not alarm the snake - then once she was a safe distance away, she screamed blue murder! I rushed to see what was up, but made sure I grabbed the camera first. We stood and watched the snake for a good 10 minutes, I suppose. He seemed to be unaware that we were there, we stood completely still and quiet, then he disappeared under the woodpile. Later on that afternoon he was seen slithering under the door into the garage, so we called out the snake-catcher. For $50 he did a thorough search of everything in the garage, including looking in all the coats hanging up but it had slipped out again. A few days later it turned up at our neighbour's house, on their porch next to where the dog was sleeping. They decided to take no chances and sliced its head off with a spade. The thing wriggled around headless for a couple of hours The head itself, although detached from the body, would have still been able to deliver a venomous bite for about an hour, something you should be aware of! A man was on the news last year telling his story after he beheaded a snake and it bit him as he was dropping the head in the bin. He was very close to death when the paramedics arrived.

It has to be said, I am more worried about me, my kids or my dogs being attacked by stray dogs than by spiders or snakes. I have never seen as many dogs running loose as I have in this country. I even have the ranger's phone number on my mobile phone so I can report one running loose on the highway. Because of the warm climate here, many dogs are left out all day while the owners are at work, but climb or dig their way out through fencing. Many builders take their dogs with them to work and just let them run around on the building site. Have had more than a few scares with dogs running up to me from nowhere. The bloke up the road has already had warnings about his Rottweiler escaping but it was out again last week, he just doesn't seem to care.

SydneyStace

Great pics Jacqui. I bet the zoom lense came in handy!!