Chaos Reading discussion

...and each other, apparently.

Welcome to North Queensland, where the snakes are big enough to eat the crocodiles: http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/20...

Snake vs Crocodile

Yikes! One of my most vivid memories of the Northern Ontario "bush" (which means nothing like what Aussies call "bush") is watching a fight between a 3' mud snake and a foot long bullfrog. I also once spent a whole morning watch a 2' garter snake swallow a large American toad. But the scale of this is mind-boggling — even if we assume it's a small crocodile (I do wish somebody had mentioned actual sizes).

Locally, there are probably no animals that will kill me. We have coyotes, which to my knowledge have killed one person, ever (though that wasn't too far a way and quite recently), and we have black bears, which do, rarely, attack. Sharks are a rare possibility.

But really the most dangerous living things I have to face are practically-nonvenomous spiders, disease-carrying ticks, and my cat (who is still unhappy about the new dog).

Yeah, I wish they'd mentioned the sizes too. For what it's worth, I don't think it looks like a very big croc, and is probably just a "freshie" (freshwater croc - they're nowhere near as big & scary as the "salties").

Someone shared these pictures with me a few years ago, just as I was about to leave for the Torres Strait for the first time. It's one of the local bird-eating spiders....eating a bird. Warning: This is totally creepy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/eart...

I was scared of spiders for years until I realised my son had inherited my fear so I did the Taronga Zoo phobia course. They hypnotised me and shortly there after I was holding orb spiders and huntsmen and even a funnel web in a glass jar with venom dripping from his teeth

These days I can catch and release the huntsmen at home but I'm more inclined to leave them be.

My 6 year old daughter got annoyed with one last week and stabbed it to death with a screw driver. She bought me the corpse in her hand and told me it had been rude to her so she'd killed it.

I think my daughter is quicker than the snake in the story above

Nice! Years ago, my next door neighbour was a very easy-going man from Niue in the Pacific Islands. I once had a huntsman that I couldn't bear touching even with a very long window pole, so I asked him to come around and get rid of the spider for me.

He slowly walked up to it, gently scooped it up in his hands, softly talking to it... then suddenly threw it on the ground & violently stomped on it. Afterwards, he picked it up by one mangled leg, and with a genuinely confused look on his face said, "Why you do that? Why you bite? I was HELPING you..."

My wife used to take them out by hand until one bit her. She didn't stamp on it, but she wasn't pleased

My old house mate (40 years old and a virgin when the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin came out) was sat with his cat on his lap one night. He suddenly leapt up and threw the cat across the room and I asked what was wrong. He he shouted that the cat had given him a filthy look. The cat was hissing from the doorway and I said "well it is now mate"

The cat didn't come home for several weeks and my housemate left food outside for it and insisted on leaving the back door open each night in case it wanted to come home

This lead to the police letting themselves in one morning to ask us about a stolen telegraph pole and us sitting stoned and scared wondering why the police were smiling at us.

But none of this has anything to do with a crocodile and a snake, I just remembered it and it made me smile

Ruby wrote: "Someone shared these pictures with me a few years ago, just as I was about to leave for the Torres Strait for the first time. It's one of the local bird-eating spiders....eating a bird. Warning: This is totally creepy..."

So your true purpose here is really to deprive everyone of sleep, one way or another.

Whitney wrote: "Ruby wrote: "Someone shared these pictures with me a few years ago, just as I was about to leave for the Torres Strait for the first time. It's one of the local bird-eating spiders....eating a bir..."

I live to serve. Why should I be the only insomniac?

Richard, I have tried for the life of me to figure out a just excuse for throwing a cat across a room, but I've got nothing.

I just read in The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution that giant earthworms in Australia could grow up to 4 metres long! A quick google image search results in these. Seen any of these, Ruby?

Humans are by far the most dangerous animals where I live (suburbs just outside of Washington, DC), although my son is fighting a number of tick-borne diseases (lyme, bartonella, babesia).

Ruby wrote: "Ruby wrote: "Richard, I have tried for the life of me to figure out a just excuse for throwing a cat across a room, but I've got nothing.

i>

yeah he didn't have much either. at the time he was 37 and never had a girlfriend. his standard reaction was to fall in love with the girlfriends of his housemates which lead to much discomfort. i broke up with a girl and he asked her out, our other house mate broke up with a girl and he asked her out. it was sad, but at the same time he threw his cat across the room because it looked at him strangely

why the hell is this in italics?

Whitney wrote: "Richard wrote: "why the hell is this in italics?..."

You cut off the 'end italics' HTML when you cut and pasted from the original post. You have "i>" which is missing a "<" and a "/" before the "i>".

madness. i got an iphone earlier this week, the first one i have ever had. i have no idea how to use it. my 8 year old keeps showing me and i keep getting more confused



http://atheistdad74.blogspot.com.au - Indiana Jones and The Intelligent Design

Marc wrote: "I just read in The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution that giant earthworms in Australia could grow up to 4 metres long! A quick google image search results in thes..."

I think those earthworms live down south in Victoria. I've never seen one that size, thankfully. I think they have a Giant Earthworm somewhere too...Yep. Victoria: http://www.travelvictoria.com.au/expe...

One thing I've discovered up here is click beetles. They have a little extra leg thingy that they use to violently launch themselves into the air, along with a quite loud "CLICK" sound. If they get stuck underneath a coffee table, they'll spend hours ricocheting back and forth between the floor and the underside of the table. They're also very hard to flush..

Is Australia home to more species of animals that can poison you than the rest of the world?

Funnel web spiders. Paralytic tics. Hideously poisonous snakes. Salt-water crocodiles (salty motto: Mustard? We don't need no steenkin' condiments!). Box jelly fish. Road trains.

yeah i think we have the majority of the deadlies here. we have red backs scuttling around outside my place but i don't mind them overly and the kids are well aware of them. it's strange going down cycle paths and seeing the occasional red bellied black snake sun baking on the path.

blue bottles wash up on the beach pretty often causing loads of back packers to rush ashore complaining of ouchies

the shark alarm on the beach is quite amazing, classic old air raid siren from world war 2

blue ringed octopi are in the rocks off of my beach as well

best i have encountered though was a thing called a bullrout fish which hangs around the rocks of inland lakes and rivers. it has - no word of a lie - poisonous spines around it's anus. friend of mine trod on one and her leg turned to agony. the pain increases minute by minute so she went from annoyed and rankled to sobbing and incoherant in about 25 minutes.

so yeah, everything will bite, poison or blister you here but at least it's not boring





http://atheistdad74.blogspot.com.au - Indiana Jones and The Intelligent Design

Yes, we have box jellyfish here too. For the hottest part of the year I have to ignore the stunningly beautiful tropical ocean, as it's not safe to swim here. As a result, I've been here over 18 months and only gone swimming once - well twice if you include the time on my birthday when I tried swimming in the stinger nets at Magnetic Island. The water was less than 2 feet deep and warmer than bathwater.

Ewwwww to all of the above! I'm in the office looking out at the rain and you have made me thankful I don't live in warmer climes D: D:- around Christmas me and my husband went to the zoo (I raced a seal, but there was no badge available stating this!) in Bergen and he pointed out all the different types of spider that he'd once found in his house in Paraguay... it was educational.

Leo wrote: "Ewwwww to all of the above! I'm in the office looking out at the rain and you have made me thankful I don't live in warmer climes D: D:- around Christmas me and my husband went to the zoo (I raced ..."

Oh dear gods. Yeah that place scares me. Also, when it rains spiders in Brazil, that could probably cross the border:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science...

i was on a bus in cambodia where i was living years back. my wife was working back in our village and i had to get into phnom penh to get some cash. the bus travelled through a town called Scun where it stopped for the local vendors to sell "fried spiders" - plastic bag after plastic bag was passed through the window to happy travellers who then sucked and chewed their way through palm sized spiders, offering them to me

at the time i was still hugely fearful so the occasional not quite dead critter that would bolt for freedom caused me to make lots of very squeaky sounds to the amusement of the entire bus

a friend came through to visit us and i dared him to grab a spider from Scun and eat it in our village. he did so, but when our local driver patted him on the shoulder and said "you lukcy you lucky, yours pregnant" as he ate the abdomem my mate turned literally green

Richard wrote: "i was on a bus in cambodia where i was living years back. my wife was working back in our village and i had to get into phnom penh to get some cash. the bus travelled through a town called Scun whe..."

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

I think I just vommied a little in my mouth.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

I have absolutely no problems with other people eating spiders.

Hey Ruby- I really want to find either a thread or something on the funniest books ever. Can you help a fellow bookie/cat lover out?

Hey Cora - There's a Group Shelf for Humour. And here's the thread that went with it: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
There was a new thread started for new nominations here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

My recollection is that Christopher Moore came highly recommended (although I didn't love him as much as some other people did).

We have no snakes in Alaska. Well, apparently in the south east there are garter snakes...No spiders of any real significance. I have never seen a cockroach. You can go into the woods, pick up a log and there is nothing creepy or crawling underneath it. But one does need to watch for moose....and maybe the occasional grizzly bear...

There may be rattlesnakes left around where I live, but I'd have to look hard to find them, along with the black bears. The big worries are tick and insect vectored diseases, like erlichiosis, eastern equine encephalitis, and Lyme disease.

Although, last year was mosquito hell.I believe that there is potential for someone to perish in a mosquito swarm.

Jennifer wrote: "Although, last year was mosquito hell.I believe that there is potential for someone to perish in a mosquito swarm."

Black flies? In many parts of Canada they're far worse than mosquitoes, because they take chunks when they bite.

Hey thank you Ruby!! That helps

Jennifer wrote: "Although, last year was mosquito hell.I believe that there is potential for someone to perish in a mosquito swarm."

Yeah, us too! I can't so much as look in the general direction of "outside" at the moment without getting bitten. And of course the kind that are biting in our yard? Dengue mosquitos, obvs. (ie the ones that give you Dengue Fever). We've had several reported cases of Dengue Fever in our neighbourhood since the monsoon season started.

Ruby wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "Although, last year was mosquito hell.I believe that there is potential for someone to perish in a mosquito swarm."

Yeah, us too! I can't so much as look in the general direction ..."

Well....at least our mosquitos don't carry anything nasty....we will just have to see how this global warming thing pans out. Things have changed some here in the sub-arctic....

BWAHAHAHAHA!
37 Pictures That Prove Australia Is The Craziest

That is one bad-ass cassowary.

Toilet snakes is a thing?! What the hell is a mole cricket!

Leo wrote: "Toilet snakes is a thing?! What the hell is a mole cricket!"

I'm pretty sure that toilet snake thing happened in Darwin while I was on holiday there. It was on the front page of the NT News (as opposed to the murders in Adelaide which were on the front page of every other paper in the country). Seriously, the NT News is really quite funny: https://twitter.com/TheNTNews

Mole crickets I can't help you with though. I've never seen that before, and the text won't load for me..

Leo wrote: "Toilet snakes is a thing?! What the hell is a mole cricket!"

Leo wrote: "Toilet snakes is a thing?! What the hell is a mole cricket!"

A ver large, burrowing cricket. Google weta.