Reminder to expats in Australia

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I'm sure you don't need reminding but I thought I would anyway - we are suffering from a bit of a plague of redback spiders at the mo due to the interesting weather, and this morning DS went outside to sit on one of his ride-on trucks. Suddenly crossed my mind that it would be a perfect place for redbacks to hide under, so grabbed him off and DH checked - 2 big redbacks and an egg sac.

All dealt with safely now - but just wanted to share our "near miss" if you like, in case your memories needed jogging.

Not quite as scary as finding one in the hood of DS's pushchair when we went to the Newcastle Show a few weeks back - only a baby thankfully which was swiftly despatched - but the pushchair had only been left out overnight and that was the result! Gah!

I always find redbacks in the outside toys, needs constant vigilance.

One year I have a large one abseil out of the Christmas tree we had just set up!

I had a blitz around the yard last weekend, found 4 of the buggers!

2 in a folding chair that is my washing basket rest , 1 under a wooden seating area & 1 in the handle of the hills hoist!

Must re-check the kids toys, tho. Haven't done so for a while.

We are also being over taken by millipedes...that are everywhere!

Yikes.

I've never seen one here, but I'm very bad at checking toys etc.

We also have milipedes by the bucketfull differentnameforthis. Farkin hate 'em. Also a plague of mozzies atm. Poor dd is covered in great lumpy sore bites

ah yes, I forgot to mention the 2 that were lurking under the saw horses, plus another egg sac.

Haven't seen any millipedes yet - are they really bad? Mozzies are vile here too, CS - loads of 'em, nasty bitey bastards.

Do you have the march flies as well? THey're vicious biters too.

The millipedes are harmless...just everywhere!

Have seen a couple of the flies, but haven't had any problems...yet!

Only a few redbacks here and some whitetails. Mind you, this place is sprayed to within an inch of its life every 3 months!

Thumb, I got the house and garden sprayed after we had three very near misses with whitetails in the house. i almost picked one up, being the spider lover I am, then noticed the tail, googled it and called the pest guys immediately! I am such an insect lover and hated having it done but safety first over here! The only prob with having garden sprayed is that the lizards disappear as well and although I'm constantly checking DD's cubby house and toys we've had no more webs since then. You made me realise that I need to be even more vigilant though...

We haven't seen any white tails here so far but one of my friends from PLaygroup has just had her house fumigated because she found some in the house, so we're keeping our eyes open!

aaaarghh how do you lot DEAL with all these terrifying bugs???! Spanish cockroaches were enough for me. And the large wasps, but nothing like you have over there where all the bugs are fecking gigantic and deadly!

shudder

ah but they're NOT all gigantic, that makes it worse, kitbit! Except the feckin cockroaches, which are the size of baby mice in our house and I loathe them. The wasps are a lot bigger but don't tend to bother people like the European ones, thank GOD! They freak me out big time.

Oh I am so glad I live in England right now

Oh great, so there are also teeny creepy crawlies that can slice your arm off.
Cockroaches are in league with the devil, I hate the way they dash at your feet and . uuuurgghhhh

Sorry for butting into your thread just to be freaked out!!!

Claudia we also have the millipede plague - every morning I go round and collect them up and flush them down the loo and the next day, there are another 10!

I don't mind them though, better millipedes than spiders. I had assumed we would have loads of spiders being in the hills but we don't seem to get them in the house.

We have loads of lizards in the garden and I wonder if they have taken over as prime carnivore and so there is less for spiders to eat. Fine by me, I love seeing the little lizards sunning themselves.

Snakes, people, the thing to worry about is snakes. The little brown ones = deadly. One of them killed my littlest cat a couple of years ago.

Forget the cockroaches and the millipedes and focus on the slithering death-carriers, for goodness' sakes.

(Am I helping?)

(also, you do know about drop bears, right?)

I've got my wizard's hat to protect me from the bears.

yes, I know about drop bears!

Don't have snakes here particularly, thankfully - plus we have a large bunch of semi-resident and very raucous kookaburras, which should help keep the snakes down. They've certainly reduced our lizard population!

Still not seen any millipedes but we have had a plague of caterpillars in some kind of lily plant thing - they started as teeny caterpillars chewing through the leaves, but we didn't realise they'd gone down the leaves to the roots and chewed through those as well! DH spent some time yesterday digging them our and sticking them in bins full of water to drown the beasts (the biggest we saw was about 2.5" long). (fingers crossed they're not caterpillars of some amazinlgy rare butterfly)

I spoke too soon....
Just found a young white tail in DD's bedroom

Off to call Mr Pest Control again, bye bye lizards..

Oh I'm glad you found it first, brightongirl - about the lizards but that's just the way it has to be, hey. As soon as I see a spider in here, that's it - full fumigation.

abithormonal, if you're still around - how are you doing with DS? All going well?

Drop bears? WHAT??

Ozzie, the dds and I do "Milipede Safari" most mornings. We sweep them up and chuck 'em in the bin. The trouble is dd1 likes to keep them as pets , and dd2 is terrified of them and has hysterics everytime dd1 introduces her pets.

Drop bears lurk in eucalyptus trees where they're well camouflaged and catch their prey by dropping on them and stunning them.

They target small prey like lizards and echidnas mostly. But sometimes they react to sudden movement and drop on humans. It won't kill a human or anything, but they have been known to stun. So it's worth being careful under eucalypts that's all.

But what are they tortoise, are they really . . . bears???

Well, yes. Related to koalas.

tortoise...I spent the first 4 months standing away from every tree in Sydney because of those frigging drop bears...

And you survived, see? So that was a good move. Aren't you glad you were warned?

You sure you're not for a full blooded aussie, Tortoise?!!!