Close calls!

So these past two days I have been reminded about all the "dangerous" things that live in Australia. I was hyper-sensitive two and a half years ago when we first moved here but now I am pretty passive about most things. This is because I have learned to identify what is dangerous and while most things look creepy they are harmless. Secondly, I have learned to put levels of danger in perspective. For instance, in the USA I was scared of great white sharks. Now, I am afraid of salt water crocks (they eat the great whites) and when I scuba dive and see sharks they are always sleeping. Also, people survive shark attacks ALL THE TIME...but they never survive crock attacks! So there you have it "perspective!"

Anyway, back to my dangerous things list. Australian Redback spiders and Australian Funnel-web spiders are the most venomous spiders in Australia (which puts them on a top 10 list for most poisonous in the world--#4 for the funnel-web). They will kill you in a matter of hours without anti-venom....which is funny b/c hardly anyone ever dies from a bite as anti-venom is widely available in Australia. Be prepared right?

So I noticed a little baby spider building a web next to our door buzzer (the one Thomas always wants to push even though we are the ones not home). Anyway, I noticed the web was funnel shaped but a lot of spiders build those webs right? Anyway, I didn't bother with the little guy and two months later it was a monster spider--I was only able to correctly identify it once it was the size of a baby mouse...Funnel-web! I showed it to an Aussie friend who came over just to check my suspicions and he said, wow--that is a Funnel-web and then he smashed it with a phone book! GO WAYNE. Good thing he didn't miss because Funnel-webs jump AND they stay alive under water with an air sack (so you can step on them in the swimming pools etc...) they just don't die (unless you smash it with a phone book apparently). Here is the wiki site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider

So that was yesterday, then TODAY Thomas and I are swimming at Clovelly beach (over by Coogee Beach)

and we are wading knee deep in the ocean and I see a cute little bluebottle jelly fish (also known as the Portuguese man-o-war jelly). I grabbed Thomas's sand shovel and scooped it up and then started scouting for more while we got out of the water. Usually the rule of thumb is the longer the tentacles the more painful the sting. So a little jelly fish with really long tentacles will hurt more than those huge fat stubby jelly fish.
Tentacle length aside, bluebottle jellies, have a reputation of being one of the more painful stings with 2-3 days of continuous pain! here is the link and a nice picture to go with it, yes those are legs of someone who was stung by a blue bottle (clearly bigger though than the one we caught! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Man_o'_War Nothing like close calls!!