A pet Gecko... You must keep these in the laundry!

So I don't know if I've put anything in this blog in the past about the bugs/creatures here in Australia... but I'll tell you one thing... there are A LOT of them! Matt is a bit of a conservationist when it comes to life... insect life. The rule of the house is that we can only kill cockroaches and a certain spider that I can't even remember. Everything else must "be removed from the premises with as little disruption as possible". Right. Let's just think about this for a minute... I don't mind bugs when they are outside. I don't mind giving them space and letting them live their lives... I even understand if they feel threatened that they have a need to protect themselves by biting or stinging me as a the threatening human...but in MY HOUSE... it is fair game to me. I should be able to squish or spray or drown something if it is in my space... So, when Matt isn't home--or not in the room--that is exactly what I do... but there are some things that I can't even look at much less aim at and destroy... like cock roaches. They have got to be the most awful looking creatures to me... THANK GOODNESS Matt lets me kill them with spray... but still, early in the morning when they are lurking in a dark corner somewhere--it can be very hard to not scream out and wake the whole neighborhood--much less Matt, the world's lightest sleeper. I have conquered this fear and just recently, as I was about to step into the shower early on a Sunday morning, I managed to calmly spray a big-'ole CR and watch it go all nuts--all this without squealing or yelling or even waking up Matt. I was very proud of myself. In fact, I showed Matt the result of my conquest as soon as he was awake!

One day, Matt picked me up at the train station as I was coming home from a night out with good friends and apparently just before he left, he noticed Maize (his cat) playing with something in the courtyard. When we got home from the station, Matt went outside to investigate. He found that Maize had been playing with a little gecko. And now the sugar ants (the same ones that have been plaguing our house-living in our garbage bin-and cleaning out under the oven door (you know the crack that you can't ever clean because it is so tiny, but still catches everything!) have been attacking the poor thing. It was still alive so Matt picked off all the ants, found a shoe box and spent then next 5 days trying to resuscitate the poor thing. I allowed the shoe box to be in the laundry room, but would not allow it any further into the house. We determined that it had broken back legs and probably had internal injuries as well, but still every night Matt came home from work and caught flies, moths and bugs to feed to the gecko. Finally Matt decided there was nothing else he could do for the little fella so let him go in the courtyard. In a flash, he had scurried off under the bushes never to be seen again.

We had a month where we were under attack by the little sugar ants. They were everywhere! I had done some clearing in the courtyard, so I don't know if I disturbed them or if the drought was what drove them into the house searching for water, sugar and protein. Matt apparently has spent years studying these ants and has figured out their patterns, what draws them in, how they operate and has coined the phrase "random search mode." This being there is a select set of ants are sent out each day to search for food and water. When they find a source they head back to the ranch (nest, hill-whatever!) and tell the others. These worker ants then follow the trail left by the searcher back to the source. In droves, they come to break off bits and pieces of the food or drink the water to carry back to the hill. Once the source is used up or the trail lost, then the searcher ants return to "random search mode' and start all over again. Well, needless to say, they were relentless at finding any meat crumbs, sugary bits or pools of water they could find and cleaned us out, so to speak. I spent weeks trying to find anything they might possibly be interested in our kitchen and tossing them or sealing them. The honey now lives in a Ziploc bag because you all know it is impossible to remove every last drop of honey from the cap--etc. Finally they have left us and I still see the colony in the courtyard, but they have quit coming into the house for now.

Anyway, I wish I had thought to take photos of the gecko, but didn't think about it, so here is a photo of Maize the cat... she isn't as mean as she looks-most of the time!

Ciao,

Alison