We lived in a new house on a hill that had formerly been uninhabited, overlooking the city. Snakes, spiders, wallaby’s liked to visit. I had a big picture widow with a great view in the kitchen. Very sad to see parakeets blinded in eclipse fly into the window
at full speed, and not survive.
We have so many animal stories. One of my personal favorites is about the gullahs, pink and gray parrots. The Aussies have a saying: “Don’t be a dumb gallah.” It always puzzled me. After we’d lived there a couple years, we were returning from a vacation and at one point a flock of gullahs were in the road blocking all traffic.
We honked, hollered, tried advancing slowly: nothing worked. I don’t recall how long we sat there waiting for them to move, but it seemed like forever at the time.
Woke up one morning to see on the front page of the Canberra (pronounced Canbra)Times a half page photo of our neighbor at the foot of the hill folding up a 7-foot extremely poisonous snake. At the top of the photo was our house: the sake had slithered past us down the hill to our neighbor.
We had a large galvanized garage door and would occasionally be greeted with large black tarantulas when we pulled it down. Stories like that on the hilltop.
I’m reliving one of the most fun and interesting ties of our lives, virtually something new and different daily. But missed the moths.
Message Thread
« Back to index