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@mariner4life said in Straya!:
Fuck bats, stinky squeeky fruit raiding vermin.
You aren't allowed to handle them without having the required shots, so be happy you aren't dead Raz.
Approx 47 million of them used to roost in the city, creating entire no-go zones. When the council tried to move them on smelly hippies descended and tried to save them. Just shoot the fluffybunnies and be done with it (hippies or bats, I'm cool with either).
About 6pm in Cairns there is a shift change, where the cockatoos come back from the forest, and the bats head out. It's a pretty cool sight.
But also fuck cockatoos, noisy, drunk flying, destructive fucks.
Just on the bats again, the Hervey Bay colony is somewhat smaller but still huuuge. We don't get the shift change but the evening fly out is still massivy spectacular. The flapping noise of their wings is incredibly loud.
But don't get shat on. Bat shit is the stickiest horriblest gooeyest carpaint strippiest substance known on this earth.
Fuck bats.
Picture if you will one of your first nights in new accommodation in Brisbane. Quite a few drinks into the evening, you and another officer go outside for a cigarette. It's coming on dusk and you hear what sounds like a pterodactyl landing in the tree you're standing under. Squealing like big girls blouses you race inside, look at each other and start laughing at the spectacle it must have looked to a bystander. What it was was heaps of these little fuckers coming in for the night. They can grow to a kilo in weight each.
The sound of their wings as they took off sounded like they could carry a cow away with them.
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@antipodean I'm never closing my eyes again
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Huntsman.
We did a house and car swap with my Uncle when I was a kid. He's a Kiwi that lived in Aus, he wanted to show his kids around NZ, my folks wanted to see Straya.
We were all in the car about to leave somewhere near Canberra I think, and my father (the driver) went to wind (yes, wind) the window down, a spider the size of a dinner plate (well to me at the time) was on the door panel. Father screamed, flung open the door and refused to get back in. Mother, who it would be fair to say, wasn't easily flustered, and from a tough upbringing, grabbed a picnic blanket, and the hideous arachnid, and flung it out of the car - directly at my father. It hit him but didn't stick fortunately, as I would have been from a broken home.
3 kids under the age of 12, and 2 adults in a car for 8 hours. Not a fucking word was spoken.
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Huntsman.
We did a house and car swap with my Uncle when I was a kid. He's a Kiwi that lived in Aus, he wanted to show his kids around NZ, my folks wanted to see Straya.
We were all in the car about to leave somewhere near Canberra I think, and my father (the driver) went to wind (yes, wind) the window down, a spider the size of a dinner plate (well to me at the time) was on the door panel. Father screamed, flung open the door and refused to get back in. Mother, who it would be fair to say, wasn't easily flustered, and from a tough upbringing, grabbed a picnic blanket, and the hideous arachnid, and flung it out of the car - directly at my father. It hit him but didn't stick fortunately, as I would have been from a broken home.
3 kids under the age of 12, and 2 adults in a car for 8 hours. Not a fucking word was spoken.
yeah, my uncle was on a motorway doing 110 when one walked out from behind the sunshade...
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I didn't realise huntsmen could leap so far either although its common sense when you look at how fucking big they are.
Rented a place in Noosa Opened the sun umbrella on the deck and one of the ugly feckers leapt straight at my face.
Helluva fright I can tell you although I didn't scream like a little girl I too did the end of the broom at arms length thing and pushed it off the deck into the undergrowth.
Next morning I pulled a pair of shorts on and a fucking enormous Queensland cockroach ran up my groin. I screamed that time. Dirty fluffybunnies roaches.
Place I lived in Netherlands had a small colony of bats (15ish) in the roof. Was cool watching them fly out of a winters night across the snow. So yes from an early age I did, indeed, have bats in the attic.
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@mariner4life said in Straya!:
Huntsman.
We did a house and car swap with my Uncle when I was a kid. He's a Kiwi that lived in Aus, he wanted to show his kids around NZ, my folks wanted to see Straya.
We were all in the car about to leave somewhere near Canberra I think, and my father (the driver) went to wind (yes, wind) the window down, a spider the size of a dinner plate (well to me at the time) was on the door panel. Father screamed, flung open the door and refused to get back in. Mother, who it would be fair to say, wasn't easily flustered, and from a tough upbringing, grabbed a picnic blanket, and the hideous arachnid, and flung it out of the car - directly at my father. It hit him but didn't stick fortunately, as I would have been from a broken home.
3 kids under the age of 12, and 2 adults in a car for 8 hours. Not a fucking word was spoken.
yeah, my uncle was on a motorway doing 110 when one walked out from behind the sunshade...
That happened to me once just as I'd got the motorbike up to 70mph, one walked across my eyeline on the INSIDE of my helmet visor. Admittedly not huntsman-sized, but quite intimate and close up for first thing in the morning. I somehow had the self control to calmly pull over, remove gloves and helmet, and brush the thing to the roadside. Rather than flail like a maniac. Fuck spiders.
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Lots of talk about spiders, snakes and crocs, but no mention of the one thing that makes living in Australia almost unbearable. The fucking shopping trolleys. What cnut would design a shopping trolley with four wheels that swivel? Makes the trolley next to impossible to control, and if it wasn't for Mrs Crazy Horse being in charge of the fucking things when we go shopping, I would have ditched this country long ago.
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@Crazy-Horse said in Straya!:
Lots of talk about spiders, snakes and crocs, but no mention of the one thing that makes living in Australia almost unbearable. The fucking shopping trolleys. What cnut would design a shopping trolley with four wheels that swivel? Makes the trolley next to impossible to control, and if it wasn't for Mrs Crazy Horse being in charge of the fucking things when we go shopping, I would have ditched this country long ago.
And I always get the one fucking trolley that wants to go the opposite direction than I do. Fuckers
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All good observations from the lucky country but the glaring stain on the great republic of Australia is something absolutely hideous that I first noticed in 1988....
Some of them call their daughters "Peta"!
Yes, as in Peta Williams, Peta Snell, Peta plumbly walker etc
Give me a thousand huntsmen and a troop of chlamydia riddled koalas anyday over asking to see "Peter" and having a chick show up!
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Cane toads in Queensland... I might be a socialist* who sees some value in keeping the native fauna around, but fuck them.
*Not really.
I don't think they are native , they were bought over to keep down some sort of bug in the sugar cane but they don't jump high enough to get the bugs at the top of the cane.
Nuke the fluffybunnies from orbit , its the only way to be sure.
A mate told me when you run them over it sounds like a tire blowout, any truth to this?
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All good observations from the lucky country but the glaring stain on the great republic of Australia is something absolutely hideous that I first noticed in 1988....
Some of them call their daughters "Peta"!
Yes, as in Peta Williams, Peta Snell, Peta plumbly walker etc
Give me a thousand huntsmen and a troop of chlamydia riddled koalas anyday over asking to see "Peter" and having a chick show up!
Yeah sure mate, you'd complain if Peta Wilson showed up
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Cane toads in Queensland... I might be a socialist* who sees some value in keeping the native fauna around, but fuck them.
*Not really.
I don't think they are native , they were bought over to keep down some sort of bug in the sugar cane but they don't jump high enough to get the bugs at the top of the cane.
Nuke the fluffybunnies from orbit , its the only way to be sure.
A mate told me when you run them over it sounds like a tire blowout, any truth to this?
Not sure, it's been decades since the last time I saw them in person.
You're correct on their (not) native status - that's another reason not to care about their survival in Australia...
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Yeah they go pop
It's fun to get the 3 wood and smack them in to the neighbors yard
Straya!