Invasion of the Creepy Crawlers!

They’re taking over…

I was criticized last time for not being as normally detailed in my entry. I’ll admit, the last one was a bit all over the place. I suppose that’s worth mentioning unto itself though. When it’s time to sit down and write a new entry, when I look back on the last couple of weeks to figure out what to tell all of my adoring readers, I often find that the days sort of all just blend together. Take today for instance. I have absolutely NO idea what day of the week it is. It might be Monday. It might be Saturday. I really haven’t a clue. The only day of the week that really pokes its head out around here is Sunday, because that’s the one day a week when the locals from Alice Springs all drive out for a little weekend getaway and inundate me with requests for greek salads, Coopers Pale Ale and meat pies. Other than that, the days roll on by in a similar fashion. Now I don’t mean that in a bad way –I enjoy each day as it rolls by – but in terms of particularly exciting events to recap for you all, sometimes I sort of draw a blank.

That being said, I did title this blog for a reason. Lucky me, I’ve settled in Central Australia during a particularly horny season for the local critters out there. Babies are EVERYWHERE. Now at home that would mean little baby pigeons and squirrels. The local critters here though are a bit more worrisome that those of the New York City metropolitan area.

1)   Centipedes:

On a particularly busy Sunday, my coworker put her hands in the dishwater to wash up the plates, only to discover the hard way that an unhappy baby centipede had fallen into the water, and it stuck her with one of its venomous claws as a hello, good day madame. She did really well fighting off the pain and continuing to work. I think I would have cried. In fact, I’m sure I would have. Centipede “bites” aren’t fatal, but they can be extremely painful and can cause chills, fever, and even anaphylactic shock in people who have severe allergies to the centipede toxins. But the rotten critters are friggin’ everywhere! In addition to the bastard in the dishwater, I found one in the corner of the homestead by the coffee machine and one was putzing around by the outdoor couch that we all hang out on by our rooms. I’ve taken to catching grasshoppers to feed our pet bearded dragons – Crusty and Fiesty – and when I caught one today and put it in the lizard food jar, there was a caught centipede already in there that was literally the size of my face. It was so big that it actually made me uncomfortable just looking at it.

2)   Happy Snakes:

About a week ago someone found a baby Stimson’s python. Not poisonous, kind of cute, and actually not too unfriendly. I named the snake Flame, as someone happened to be wearing a Calgary Flames t-shirt that day. Flame lived in a bucket in the office, and we all had a rocking good time playing with him and handling him until he escaped. He’s probably still hiding in a warm spot in the office somewhere eating up the bugs, but no one has seen him since. We caught another baby Stimson’s python shortly thereafter, who was most likely one of Flame’s siblings. I named him Torch. We didn’t keep him around for too long though, Torch wasn’t as friendly.

3)   NOT Happy Snakes:

Australia is notorious for its deadly wildlife. The Box Jellyfish. The Great White Shark. The Funnel Web Spider. But of course, no list would be complete without poisonous snakes. I was walking past the kitchen the other day, and saw a yellow-colored very young baby snake wriggling towards the kitchen door. There was something about his movement that set off an alarm in my head that this was not a snake to make friends with. I sort of instinctively knew that he was the mean kind. I ran inside to go get a couple of other people to check out my discovery, and sure enough, he was a brown snake. If brown snakes bite you, you die. Or at the very least with immediate proper first aid followed by the critical medical attention, you’ll be extremely sick for days and will probably lose whatever limb the snake bit you on. Even the babies, and this guy was probably about a day old based on his size, can kill a full-grown human being. The fun thing about brown snakes is that they’re super aggressive too. If you piss them off, even accidentally, they will chase your ass down and go out of their way to nail you. We ended up shooing the baby snake away from the kitchen and into a pile of dead leaves, and there he stayed. But if there’s one newborn baby brown floating around, then there also must be siblings, and of course big mama…

About 10 minutes later, on my way to the dish room, I found one of the siblings. This one was already on his way into the kitchen. I ran to get Dean, the chef, to go and defend his territory. He swept the thing out of the kitchen with a broom and into a bucket, but it was an epic battle. The baby snake did NOT give up without a fight. I’ve never seen anything that young be so instinctively vicious. The snake wanted that broom to die. Luckily we were able to get him into the bucket (and by we I mean I supervised the process from a safe distance away…), which we covered with cling wrap so we could observe the little demon safely. Every time someone stuck their face over the bucket though, the snake went a little nuts and tried to strike. Colin, one of the owners, eventually drove into town with the snake to take him to a reptile expert to see exactly which type of brown snake he was.

A couple of days ago, Colin showed up at the homestead with another bucket, containing yet another poisonous baby snake, only this one was a different species. This time we had ourselves a Death Adder. He was found hanging out in the grass in from of motel room #2. He’s also the kind of snake that if he bites you then you die, but Death Adders are less aggressive than the brown snakes. So yeah, the resort is basically crawling with deadly baby snakes at the moment. The parents you can at least see coming since they’re large, but the babies can squeeze into ANYTHING and seem to be EVERYWHERE. Every time we walk outside we have to be mindful of where we step – any unturned leaf can have a deadly baby waiting to kill. Talk about a fun commute to and from work every day!!!

What else is new? My mother’s care package arrived, so I was restocked with double stuff oreos, skippy peanut butter, and cool ranch Doritos. I was very pleased with that. I also finally went into town for the first time last week. It was weird. The traffic! The stores! Having to pay money for food! All such bizarre concepts. I went in with the chef, the helicopter pilot, and the housekeeper. It was a nice day out on the town. Alice Springs isn’t exactly the sexiest place on the planet, but it has mobile phone reception (although stupid me forgot to top up my sim card, so I sent 3 text messages before I ran out of credit) and friggin Hungry Jack’s, so I was happy.  In other news, we’ve had insane amounts of rain recently. There have been crazy thunderstorms for the past 3 days, and the streak looks to continue until the end of the week. A lot of the roads are flooded, and people are getting stuck left and right. It’s kinda fun though! Just as long as the flood waters stay out of my room, along with the snakes and centipedes…. Apparently the creepy crawlers have been quite horny this season L