Possums and Other Aussie Creatures!

I had to wait to publish this post until after my mom and dad had gotten here so that it wouldn't give my mom nightmares about spending a month with us and possibly change her travel plans!  :)  They have some crazy critters here and some awesome ones!  We have had to get used to different kinds of pests (as they call them) and to be honest, we've secretly come to really love them.

I never really understood people that have bird-phobias until moving to Australia.  While I don't suffer from bird fears at all, I kinda see how they could freak people out.  They are NOT afraid of people at all.  They mingle around your picnics, and at the school you can't send any food that is in a bag or sack, it all has to be in in plastic containers.  I have watched a crow/raven here swoop down pick up a kid's bag of chips, open it with his beak and munch away.  It's crazy.  Then of course the magpies go through their little "crazy nesting phase" every year where they just swoop and attack you for no reason.  Luckily, we are out of magpie season.  Lex was attacked on his bike.  Said it felt a someone had thrown a baseball at his biking helmet when the magpie swooped and thumped against him.  Oaks was swooped a few times at the park, getting pecked in the head and Park was swooped while walking home from a friends but managed to bat them away.  Yikes!  Magpies...who knew right?  But look how beautiful they are with their striking black and white feathers.  They really are pretty.  The birds are crazy loud here too.  Sometimes while facetiming I will have to move in doors because the birds just get so loud I can't hear.  For real!  The kookaburas are awesome.  They laugh and sing so loud.  They mimic all kinds of sounds too.  The lorikeats are beautiful.  Bright greens, they look like parrots.  And there are wild cockatoos everywhere.  Prancing around with their big yellow head feathers.  It is so fun to just sit at a park and watch and listen to the birds (it's also good for a scouting merit badge ;)  They have tons of cool birds here.

We have lots of butterflies and cool moths here too.  We work hard to get some good photos!

I know I've blogged about water dragons before.  They just still amaze me.  They're everywhere!  And they kinda grow on ya.  Sometimes we feed them our left over fruit pieces.  We've seen some small ones but we've seen some that are close to 2 feet long, head to tip of tail.

These are our geckos!  They have been so much fun.  They are all over our house.  And yes, occasionally in our house.  They chirp at night, loud...louder than crickets.  We were told to embrace them, because they eat the bugs and especially the mozzies (mosquitos).  After seeing my girls covered in mozzie bites each night in their beds, we have fully embraced geckos. And consider them our best mozzie repellent.   Occasionally we see them scurry along the walls of the house and we even see a baby gecko every now and then.  The most likely place to see them is the front porch or on  the outside of the bath room window.  When we turn the light on at night, it attracts moths and bugs so the geckos wait there on the window to catch a bite to eat.

We see them there so often we have affectionately named them Floyd and Gerty (short for Gertrude).  When the girls bathe at night, we watch Floyd and Gerty fight over moths (literally fight...they go after each other and sometimes bite each others tails off).  Gerty usually wins...let's be honest, females are just tougher!  ;)

Of course, I can't not mention, Australia's own...the possum!  At first I was totally freaked out by them.  Not so much them as the sounds of them.  They run all over the roofs of houses and fences and they love running around on the pipes in my garage.  So each night (they are nocturnal) it sounded like someone was on my roof trying to break in my house.  I would wake up to their loud "thump" landing on my roof.  And panic waking up Lex telling him I heard someone on the roof.  I asked some of the mums and they told me to not worry, it was just possums and I would get used to it.  We were told there is no use trying to get rid of them.  It's illegal to kill them.  If you try to catch and remove them they will ALWAYS come back.  They are all over the place.  They run across the telephone wires, they love our tree in the front yard and they even walk along our pool fence.   You'll see in this pic she's carry her baby on her back, that's pretty common.  I have to say, I have grown to love these little guys.  I love watching them.  When I hear them jump on my roof I don't even flinch any more.  I deliberately look for them at night and love to sneak up on them.  You can see in this picture, this little guy is about to jump from this tree limb to the telephone wire.  They are fast, but if they see you looking at them, they freeze and stare at you, acting dead (playing possum) until you look away then they'll take off.  In fact, we had so many in garage that the rental agency thought it was becoming a problem.  They sent a handy man out to try and board up the openings where the possums were getting in.  For about a month it was very quiet under our floors, and I have to admit, I started to actually miss the little buggers.  But no worries, we opened the garage the other night to get Lex's bike and low and behold 2 possums and one on a back froze in the light of our cars headlights.  Yah, they always find a way and they love our garage...nice try handy man.  Good thing you already got paid for your work!  :)  I was secretly happy to have them back.  We've even had them walk slowly across our back porch while we are out there eating dinner.  If there's a quiet moment during dinner (rare), a possum might peek out from the corner and take a chance to scamper across the edge.  It's so fun.  Yah, how does that happen?  I've become a possum lover!  And I can say honestly, my parents kinda secretly loved them too.  They just grow on you...their little ears and fuzzy tails are kinda endearing!!!!

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I wanted to include these shots of a cool critter here in Australia...the koala of course.  We have seen a few in the wild and they are so much fun.  When we were up at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, we actually witnessed a koala rescue.  It was a sick little guy and an animal rescue worker had to climb all they way up to get him and repel down so they could get him healthy again.  You can see him dangling from the workers hip in a net bag.  Then they put him in a cage to take him to the shelter.  It was really cool to witness.  They are seriously as cute as you imagine they would be.  And yes...we've held one!  Oh-- sooo bucket list baby!

My last critter of this post, and don't get me wrong there are LOTS of other interesting critters here, made his presence known while we were hiking on the Sunshine Coast in a National Forest up there.  He just scampered right across the path about 5 feet in front of us.  And yah-- I let out a little squeal, I mean HE IS HUGE!  It's a goanna.  And no other hiker around us seemed the least bit nervous about him or even excited to see him.  I felt like I was freaking snapping shots of the Loch Ness or something.  I mean he was about 4 feet long and heavy.  I wanted to document that dinosaurs are still roaming the earth with Elvis Presley and big foot!!!  I took a million pix.  I'm sure the Aussies were rolling their eyes and passing us by, but man-- he was cool!

We have seen some awesome things.  I'm sure when tourists come to the Western US they think squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits are cool too. Maybe I'd roll my eyes as well if a tourist were running around like a chicken with her head cut off to get a snap shot of a jack rabbit crossing her path on a hike.  Hmm, note to self-- try to be more patient with tourists!!!

Australia is amazing!!!!