Wet season – frogs, rain and fish

More and more rain. Cooler now: 32-33 C, rather than 34-35 C. Much more bearable. The skies are grey most of the time and the waves at Casuarina are pounding the beach. There are guys and gals surfing out there, no worries about the jellyfish and the crocks. Box jellyfish come when the days are overcast, but jellies prefer a flat sea, so the lifeguard tells me. Those surfers are flirting with death out there on their boards – I guess crossing the road is a risk too.

The beach has now turned brown with all the silt and muck that’s churned around, and the tide aggressively comes right up to the edge of the dunes. Well it did last night. It rolled in and said ‘SLAP – get out of the way, it’s after 7pm, get off the beach’. Sometimes the water is so lacking in oxygen that fish float on the surface of the water  - dead.

Rain brings the frogs of course. Like this one that a clever photographer clicked at Leanyer, right near me. Great photo – wish I had the lens to take such good shots. Look at the suckers on those toes – cling onto any wall nearby while your having a BBQ.

By:Bidgee; [CC-BY-3.0 www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday blessings

Making cakes
Muddy cakes
Chocolate cakes
Feeding my addiction
Sweetness to offset the sourness of the heat.

* * *

Frog in the toilet
Panic replaced by Quickness of Thought
I can’t go anywhere
So he must leave.
Revulsion rotated to pragmatism
Fried egg flipper becomes lever.
Into the bucket you go green boy!
Reluctantly he leaps from bucket to garden,
Preferring my pond.
This is not a hotel for amphibians.

* * *
(apologies to William S)

To be nor not to be
A northern territorian.
That is the question.
Whether it is nobler to stay here in the heat
Or go south, and by going south
To leave a sea of troubles,
Or by going, to take the bloody lot with you anyway.

Wildlife count

Mosquitoes:
Today I was bitten all over the neck and elbows by a creepy looking mosquito. They are not normal the insects up here. When I finally slapped it, it squished up some good looking red blood, my juices. ick. Hope it didn’t get me on the eye or the forehead like the other day. Some unearthly beastie chewed on my flesh, so I ended up looking grossly deformed, with a bulging forehead and eye. Two bites to the face and I looked like a candidate for the circus sideshow.

Frog:
A massive green frog blobbed like a lump of porcelain on my kitchen bench last night. It had no intention of going anywhere. It just lifted its foot while I moved my papers away from it to the other side of the bench. Now I know what has been knocking things down from the top shelf at night. That green hopper. Big as my fist it was.

It looked like THIS: (but no spots).

Spider:
In the sink this morning. I’m sorry – it had to go – it’s war here. The ants found it and made it their lunch and dinner.

Sleepless in Darwin

Well that was a sleepless night! And I say that as I squash ants that crawl across my trusty Mac laptop, writing my journal. It wasn’t the heat or the rain that kept me awake last night, or dreams of crocodiles (which happened the night before), no it was the frogs carrying on all night in the backyard. They are quiet now of course, now that the day is here and I am supposed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed leaping out of bed for work.

But on the positive side, I think I have won the battle with the ants and giant cockroaches that partied in my pantry while I was away for a month. Had to throw out half the contents of the cupboard. Everything that wasn’t in a really really really tightly sealed plastic container went into the bin. Those cockroaches, I tell you, they lean on the sides of a jar of mango chutney or a tin of beetroot, their arrogant wavy feelers pointing at me, and say, well, what you going to do about me, eh? They even crunched holes in some of the plastic bags to find what they wanted. So out it all went: rice, cornflour, cereal, chips, biscuits, pasta. You name it, they munched it, pooed in it or bred in it. There are still some cockroaches and a colony of Daddy Long Legs in the bathroom to be dealt with, but they can wait.

The mildew removal is another matter. I have four pairs of shoes to either clean up or send to the tip: they are no good as they are, all furry with green organisms. And I had to throw out one mildew coatedpillow from the bedroom, the other three remaining ones will probably be okay with a turn in the washing machine. Two survived the process last night anyway; let’s see if the third makes it today. (Go AWAY ants. . . creeping over my screen while I type . . . they are a real nuisance . . there’s no food in there, only zeros and ones – 0101010101010101010101000001111.) Ah well, off to work in my thongs, through the puddles . . .