I need to get away from my doom and gloom for a while!

[Robin4]

@Sarah related to me a very funny story about possums, and knickers! Possums are those things most of you think of as cute little furry creatures. 

Here is a possum in case any of you are in doubt...this one is trying to get to my evening meal!

I told this story before a couple of years ago but most of you here now, were not here a couple of years ago!

Bullsh*t, there is nothing cute about possums! They stink, they cr*p and piddle everywhere, and for some reason have this hellbent desire to live with humans.

We bought this property in 2009 and it was derelict. The roof had fallen in in spots and nobody had lived here for more than a decade....A sort of Taj Mahal for possums, a comfortable space entirely unmolested by humans!

As I was renovating the main house I decided the 50's style kitchen cupboards were too good to simply throw away and I moved them up to what was to become my man cave and workshop at the rear of the property. For those who may not know, this is a 'man cave'...or at least it's my man cave!

It's a mess but, it's a shed, it isn't supposed to be tidy, it's supposed to be male liveable! If you look at that screen closely I think I am on the forum!

I had this running battle trying to keep the possums out of my workshop and man cave. I bought a possum trap and as fast as I caught a possum and relocated it, another one would move in. 

One day I was searching for a particular tool that I knew was in one of those kitchen cupboards that I had re-used in the workshop. I started at one end, opened the door and searched through the contents, went onto the next, did the same thing, and to the third.....I came to the fourth cupboard door opened it, and there was a possum staring at me! There ensued this 'Mexican stand-off' situation with the possum staring at me and me staring at the possum. I had nothing to grab it with so after about 10 seconds, I shrugged my shoulders, shut the door and moved on to the next cupboard!

Cheers......Rob

[Robin4]

@Sandra126 @Helen427 @Cathie19 @Clara116 @Sarah977

Ah Sandra, that is where you are wrong!

These three priest were at an ecumenical gathering, and to kick the conversation along the first priest who represented the Uniting church faith said....

"The other night I caught a possum! I am aware that they home, they are territorial so, I took it 10 Kms away, and you know, whithin 5 nights it was back in my yard again!"

The second priest was an Anglican,  he chirped in...

"You are right they certainly are territorial! I caught a possum and I took it 20 Kms away and within a fortnight it was back in my fruit trees again!

The third priest was a Roman Catholic! He hung his head for a while and took a deep breath and said...

"Well I caught a possum, I baptised it and I confirmed it and I have'nt seen it since"!!!

I am on the lookout for a roman catholic priest who might want to do a bit of night duty!

Cheers.....Rob

 

[Sarah977]

@Sandra126 Toads do that, too! There are lots of big toads here in the rainy season. I don't mind them around in the garden, I know they're good guys, but I don't like it when they hang out on my terrace. They hide behind or in a potted plant during the day and then sit in my dog's water bowl overnight, where they deposit their very human-looking turds. I'll see the poor dog just standing, staring into her water bowl, walk over to find toad presents, and get the dog some fresh water. Or I'll come down in the morning to find a toad turd and a puddle of toad pee on the terrace right in front of my kitchen door. I've caught those toads, which is quite the job, you don't want to touch them, they're poisonous, taken them down the 100 meters to the river and released them. The same toad, I'm sure, is back the next day. Someone told me they're like dogs, they can easily find their way back. Now I take them far up the river bed, which seems to work.

[Robin4]

@Sarah977

30 years ago we were booked to stay on Hamilton Island, just off the Queensland coast. I know just when it was because there was a pilot strike on at the time and the only planes flying in Australia were crewed by foriegn crews.

We had booked to fly direct to Hamilton Island but because of the strain on travel resources we could not get a plane any further north than Brisbane! We had to travel the 1,000 Kms from Brisbane up to Airlie Beach by coach. We were sitting right at the front of the coach directly above the driver and we travelled through the night leaving Brisbane about 4.30 pm.

Sleep was difficult, the Bruce Highway being what it was in those days, so hour after hour I just stared out the front window of the bus and as the night went on I started to panic! The bus was going from one side of the road to the other and I was sure the driver was nodding off to sleep!

He would drift over to the wrong side of the road almost running off the paved surface and then he would return to the correct side of the road. After a while I worked out what he was doing! In the headlights of the bus he could see Cane Toads on the road as he was approaching them and he would skillfully steer the bus to run over as many toads as he safely could. 

He must have run over 350-400 on that overnight trip!

Cheers......Rob

[Sandra126]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm3hd1pxHME

here you go, @Robin4

[Robin4]

@Sandra126

Ah precious, precious....that is exactly what that bus was doing....although in slow motion!

You know people in other parts of the world will call us heartless bastards killing gods creatures like that....Believe me they are the devils creatures, not Gods! Some dillusional government turkey decided to import them the get rid of the sugar cane bettle! The cane bettle effected about 5% of the cane crop. The cane toad said....' thank you very much'  and proceeded to destroy 70% of the native fauna through an area almost the size of Europe....' Whoopdy doo'  as that loopy American Virginian gun lobbyist would say!

It is the same with the Koalas. On Kangaroo Island off our South Aussie coast there are no Koala predators....no rabbits, no foxes and no poms :-))

In Flinders Chase on the western end of the Island the Koala's multiplied to the point where they physically ate their way out of food....Coming back from ' Admirals Arch' through the Eucalyptus  scrub, there was not a leaf left on the trees...the poor bloody things were starving. The Government in their wisdom decided to cull them....Jezzuuss did that create a storm around the world..."How can you heartless bastards do something like that to those cute furry creatures!

You don't understand you lot, you don't understand what it is like to see an emanciated animal on deaths door through lack of food....we can't hand raise 350,000 Koalas, it is just not possible.

Australia seems to be the place where, despite the harsh environment over much of it, nature flourishes....and  f*cking cane toads are part of it.....right @Sandra126

Cheers......Rob

[Sarah977]

@Robin4   There are quite a few native trees here that are protected and you get in trouble for cutting them down (altho, being Mexico, if developers throw enough bribe money around, they can get away with anything). Some are truly beautiful, like the parota tree, but there is one that I surreptitiously cut down which was right on my fence line. It's a scrubby looking tree, the bugs and caterpillers like to chew the leaves, so the leaves, which aren't particularly attractive to start with, always look scrappy and full of holes, and they make thousands of hard, rough seeds that  resprout new trees- I've found 10 new trees sprouting from one seed after it's been lying on the ground getting watered all rainy season.

[Helen427]

@Sarah0Maybe you should pop them into plant pots and sell them to those who do enjoy them.

Most plants tend to self seed or need grafting.

It sounds like you need a supply of the little blue ladybirds like we used to have in New Zealand - they were introduced to eat the aphids and mealy bugs, just like wasps were to eat the white butterflies that eat cabbages...

[Sarah977]

Duplicate deleted.

[Sarah977]

@Helen427  Oh, I don't usually kill things, plant or animal. No one actually wants those trees, they're just protected because they're native to the area, and I assume they have some purpose in the balance of nature, like feeding the bugs and caterpillars. And there's plenty of them in the wild jungled areas here, it's not the sort of thing you'd want in your yard. The seeds are about the size of an almond in its shell and according to the locals, are a cure for kidney problems. But one tree produces enough seeds to cure the kidney problems of the whole town, if everyone had kidney problems 🙂

Before I cut that tree down, I raked up literally about 10 five gallon pails full of those seeds every year. 

[Βασίλης-and-Ann0]

@Sarah977 @Robin4 @Helen427 @Sandra126 @Cathie19,

Just taking a break from our 'Sea Suite' conversion and saw your thread about possums, also blue ladybirds, toads etc... Great stories, so thought I'd contribute something.

 A few years ago, my sister & her travelling companion, had just returned to their jungle lodge, somewhere in deepest Africa,  after a day spent out in the bush viewing wildlife. While one went for a shower, the other decided to make 2 well- earned Gin and Tonics for both with plenty of ice and slices of lemon. The drinks were left on the lodge veranda table while he went back inside to bring out some nuts and binoculars. Seconds later, on returning to the veranda, he realised the G&T's had vanished. ???   Both of them did a bit of head scratching before looking out into the surrounding forest and espied 2 monkeys sitting in trees nearby holding & gulping down their drinks, ice and lemon, too !  Methinks this was probably not the first time these cheeky monkeys had run off with someone's evening tipple!!

@Robin4  , I was mightily impressed by your neat and tidy man cave.  I, too, never venture into Vassili's den, but for other reasons. I might be tempted to 'clean' it up a bit. The only similarity between yours and his would have to be the,what looks like, dead twigs or flowers I see in a vase. In Vassili's case they def are dead flowers!     What are yours, dare I ask?

[Robin4]

@Βασίλης-and-Ann0 @Paul

I am going to tag Paul in on this post because I think he may like it!

Oh Ann, they are plastic. I don't honestly know what they are doing there....well, yes I do! This man cave is the height of eclectic. There is something of my entire life here in this space. I have a picture of the first girl I ever kissed here. I was 12 and she was 11! Her name was Anne Williams....even at that age we did have a 'thing' for each other and one afternoon behind the Sir John Franklin hotel in the main street of Kapunda we both knew we wanted to take that next step and....have a kiss!

We were kids for gods sake and the thought of it was just to daunting...to actually touch someone of the opposite sex on the lips was like....something out of comics! There we were and we just could not pluck up the courage to actually plant those lips on each other so, I had a brilliant idea! Alongside us was a tree with rather large leaves so I pulled a substantial sized leaf off the tree, tore a mouth sized hole in the middle of the leaf and.....bingo, I took that leap into the next part of my life!

Oh hell Ann life was so simple then....there was no MS, no drugs, no dollars to be conjured out of nowhere, no kids to worry over....there was just Anne and those lips!.

I want to post something of my piano here but, I don't know, I think it may be inapropriate....this not a site for self flattering, it's a site for advice. I have already gone to far here, but Ann......it has been a sh*t of a week or two here and I needed to relieve my own personal stress and that is why I opened up a bit of my life to the forum.

I spend as much time as I can here in this space of mine, I love the seclusion, I don't have Ade barking instructions at me, I am just able to do something I want to do for myself.

I don't have an issue with monkeys here Ann but I sure do have an issue with possums .....one of them is sh*tting on the roof as I write this.

Maybe one day we may be able to exchange a story or two in person.....who knows.

Cheers to you both...........Rob