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We are lucky enough to live on very small acreage surrounded by farmland close to the coast, we never take for granted where we live and are always happy to share our property with our local wildlife. However, I do have a couple of stories to share from the past couple of weeks where I did wonder if I should have a completely different attitude.
Two weeks ago I was in my vegie garden clearing some of the damage we had from the winds that had been tormenting us for the past few days. I picked up a cardboard box that had been blown off our rubbish pile and noticed a three foot tiger snake taking off for the safety of our retaining wall. That's fine we usually find that snakes are usually happy just to get away and find a safe haven so they don't normally worry us. However, this was not the case with this little critter because the next thing I see is that it has come back over the retaining wall and either deliberately or not is heading in my direction. I start to walk away thinking I am imaging things, I walk towards our garden gate thinking if I get behind that it might deter him for a minute, I close the gate and see him sliding underneath but by this time I have managed to reach the back stairs and know that I have the safety of closing the door if it comes any closer. He took off behind one of the garden beds and to be honest by this time I felt he was lying in wait for me. I went inside and called Robb and our grandsons so they could come and see the snake but we didn't see it again.
Last week I was out weeding our front garden beds, I picked up a box on my way outside that I had been using for disposing of weeds previously and placed it next to the area I wanted to work on next. I noticed a big hairy huntsman climb out of the box, that's ok we usually just remove these spiders and put them outside so I eased it off the side of the box into the grass around the area I was working on thinking it would race off lucky to escape. Not the case this time for whatever reason this spider did not realise I was the nice lady that never killed spiders and usually found a more compatible home for them and decided I must be some form of spider Freddy and decided it was time to defend himself. He repeatedly charged me and it didn't matter how many times I changed direction he was on a mission and had decided I was his worst enemy. After yelling at him and calling him every form of a f!@#ing mongrel Robb stuck his head out the front door and said 'Did you call me'. I explained what was going on an Robb had to come over and pick the spider up and remove it to another area of our yards.
And today we had another visitor who came to sit, maybe to rest, on our back deck. We have noticed this beautiful bird for the past week flying off in the distance over the paddock next to us and you can't help but admire the grace of his flight but I never for a minute imagined I would be lucky enough to have him come and visit us personally. Because there is a natural balance to nature I did very unkindly hope that he knew there was a long snake and a fat spider on our property that might feed his family but of course that's not up to me that is up to mother nature.
