Rachel Sun Jan 15, 2012 10:31 am
I don't know what most of those birds look like! I'll have to look them up.
I think domestic animals are pretty much the same everywhere. Apart from cats, dogs, and chickens, the most common in my area are sheep. Most people with a sizeable property (anything more than about an acre or two) in this area have sheep, although that's no true of all areas. Oh, and for some reason in this area, most people with sheep also have an alpaca. Alpacas are very good herd protectors, apparently.
Down in the city, the most common pets are cats and dogs, but also rabbits, guinea pigs, and fish. Up here in the hills, horses are reasonably common, chickens are very common (almost everyone around here has some), as well was the sheep, alpacas, and goats, and the same pets common in the city. Children are more likely to have other 'wild' pets, though, like frogs, turtles, and rescued birds. Possums in rehab are also reasonably common in the Hills, that is to say that they've been hurt or abandoned as babies and are being cared for with the intention to return them to the wild. Koalas and kangaroos are generally taken to wildlife shelters.
Up in the mid-north (of SA), sheep are very common, usually farmed for wool or meat. In the far north, beef cattle are the most common on the stations, and in the south-east, it's dairy cattle. In other places, grain crops or grapes are more common as the farming thing.
Anyway, as for creepy-crawlies, we have LOTS of spiders. The most common are Daddy-Long-Legs, and there are a couple of other generally harmless sorts, too, which I don't know the names of, but I generally called them 'Small and Brown', 'Small and Grey', and 'Large and Black' (although 'large' is relative and only about an inch long). If you see black spiders with red or white on them, it's trouble. Red-Backs and White-Tips are both very poisonous, sometimes fatal.
We also have all the usual bugs; mosquitos (called 'mozzies'), grasshoppers, what you call cicadas, moths, flies, and little flying things (I don't know what they're called but they're everywhere and are attracted to light), and slightly larger jumping things (I don't know what they're called, either). Oh, and milipedes which are everywhere in spring and very annoying, especially as they make the most horrible crunch when you stand on them.
There are also lots of dangerous water things, which everyone's careful to watch out for at the beach. We get jellyfish all the time, everywhere, and there are some sorts which it's okay to swim with and some where it's not. Little egg-shaped blobby things are fine; larger with tentacles and colour are not. We've also got to be careful about octupi, because some species are very dangerous; if you've stung by a Blue-Ring Octopus, you've got about 30 seconds to get the anti-venom, or you die.
Jellyfish and octupus are the main worries with the beach. Of course there's sharks, but shark attacks are very, very rare, and with coatguard and such, no-one ever gets eaten or bitten or whatever, unless they're excedingly stupid (swimming in unpatrolled areas or places which people don't usually go early in the morning or late at night and are out deap).
Now that I've finished scaring you, let me just say that there are lots of wonderful and amazing creatures, too. Even just in the sea, there are all sorts of fish an anenomes and things. I've not been there myself, but I'm told the Great Barrier Reef is spectacular. And most are perfectly harmless.
Anyway, I seem to by writing a lot about everything today. I'll finish up now,
from Rachel.