Mother Nature may be everywhere in the world but Austalia has a special place in her heart. At least I hhope iit's her heart; lately I'm starting to wonder if tthere's a different part of her anatomy at work.
I've had all sorts of unusual creatures in my house. Mutant size cicadas, Austalia Hopping Mice, SOUS , ie Spiders of Unusual Sizes and of course our friends the slugs and possums. No birds though, well no live ones. But a few days ago my mother-in-law came downstairs asking for Teddy and me to go upstairs and get the baby kookaburra out of the closet. You know, as you do.
Trudging up the stairs I had to mutter to myself,"I bet Dr. Spock and the stupid Supernanny ddidn't have to deal with this crap!" and head into my room to do battle. Fortunely it was not a baby kookaburra but in fact an adult minor bird. So iit's small but if I have to kill it II'm not going to get into trouble for killing some sacred native bird that is only found every 1000 years. The Aussie Minor bird is as common as the American Grackle. Cool.
Only the poor thing is hurt, either Sasha or Monty got him. Ugh, there are feathers everywhere. Marvvy. Teddy, who is my Dr. Doolittle in training goes right up and picks the little guy up. So of course the damn bird decides it can fly and is swooping around the closet and bathroom trying to escape. Being the nature lover I am, I scream and leave. Whatever, let Dr. Doolittle handle it. I'm not sure why but he does. Teddy very kindly and patiently herds the poor bird into the bathroom and shepherds the bird out the window to freedom. It's like he saves up all the empathy, kindness and patience he should use with his sisters and channels it into helping this bird. While I'm relieved to know the skills and emotions exist in his brain, I'm more than a little pissed that he refuses rouse them with his sisters. Maybe I can convince him to share the love...but then in all honesty I should convince Connor to stop annoying the crap out of him. Yeah, there's more of a chance of me picking up the bird myself.
The other joyous bit of Aussie nature we've had to endure recently is the ever quirky weather. On Thursday we were hit with sudden massive gusts of winds that blew down trees and branches all over the place. The poor kids at our school had to leave campus by walking around the perimeter under cover because several large trees feel down and more were hanging dangerously. Here's a picture of one tree in my driveway after the storm.
You can see one very large branch on thr left that looks like a different tree, but it's. From this tree, only it's been ripped off and is hanging upside down. The two skinny trees on the ground to the left are actually branches that fell. I would guess that the trees at my kids school are a good 20 feet higher than this one. I think you can appreciate why we are all looking skyward this week.
Of course if you're me, you're looking skyward, downward, over the shoulder, behind your back, under books, behind curtains...pretty much spinning like a top looking for all the crazy stuff Mother Nature dumped into this continent that is actively trying to kill you. No wonder my neck hurts all the damn time.
