Creepy Crawlies

Autumn garden clean up

Living in Australia comes with its fair share of wild tales. A lot of my non Australian friends say they could never live in Australia because of the spiders and snakes. I used to think that was silly because one would never really encounter them when living in the city. But summer was in full bloom here and the creepy crawlies came out to play. This was my first summer in Australia living in an old house with a backyard and lush garden; we used to live in a modern apartment. The backyard is incredibly inviting on hot summer days, but it takes work to keep up. It was through my maintenance of the property that I came across spiders and snakes that finally made me question how Australians survive in this wild land.

A spider that is not afraid to hang around our house is the huntsman spider, which does not spin a web, but hunts its prey. You can see where it gets its name. But to give you an idea of its size, its favourite prey are cockroaches, and the cockroaches in Australia are not your everyday cockroaches. They come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them are large to my standard, and take full advantage of their wings (yes cockroaches fly!), flying into houses at night. Does it sound like your nightmare yet?

And I finally encountered snakes, something I honestly did not think would happen. One day I saw a long black snake with red radiating from its underside slither across our driveway. I mentioned what I saw to my boyfriend and neighbour, who should be accustomed to this stuff, but they were shocked, saying I should be careful, as that snake could really do some harm. Its name is a red-bellied black snake, another creative Australian title.

Later, I had another gruesome encounter, when I went to grab something from under our house (picture a house on stilts with the laundry, deep freezer, storage, and tool shed under the house) at night. As I turned on the lights to guide my way, there was a bit of a delay, but I kept walking and noticed something squishy under my foot. The light finally turned on to reveal I stepped on a little, grey, furry creature with big ears and a long tail, whom started to jump at my leg. I forgot what I was meant to do doing and ran upstairs screaming. We think it was a baby possum, the baby of the big possum living under our house. A few days later my boyfriend checked to see if the possum was still there, and it was gone. We originally thought I had scared them away by accidentally stepping on the baby, but my boyfriend came across some news a few days later that put all the pieces together and frankly, scared me even more.

Apparently, python snakes like possums, and are not afraid to hunt possums sleeping in houses. Here is another piece of the puzzle, the day after my incident with the baby possum, we woke up to the sound of kookaburra, which you might think is an everyday occurrence in Australia, but in our neighbourhood, it is not. Kookaburra actually make their lovely (annoying) laughing noise to warn the other birds that there is a snake near by, so the birds can protect their eggs. We think a snake might have had something to do with getting rid of the possum under our house. It could also explain why the baby possum did not move when it saw me coming, as possums are usually scared of people and see well at night, the snake could have already injured it.

So summer is almost over, even though it is still hotter than ever, and I have survived! But honestly, this is all part of the adventure of living abroad. I like to think I am a stronger and braver person for it, but now the fleas have invaded our house. The snakes don’t seem so scary anymore…