What a Zoo!

Australia is full of interesting animals. (Oh! I meant in addition to the men.) Just as you have to hunt to see wild animals in New Zealand, in Australia they are everywhere. And those are just the ones you can see, which in a moment you'll understand is just a small fraction of them. I vowed that I would not go to a zoo or wildlife farm/park while in Australia, that I would take what came in the wild. And came it did. I saw: kangaroos, platypus, crocodiles, snakes (aaahhhh!), goanas, gekos and lizards, bandicoots, possums, koalas, dingos, bats, one Boyd's Forest Dragon, spiders -- enormous spiders --, the elusive Ulysses butterflies, and birds of all kinds -- kookaburras, sulphur-crested cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets, magpies, kingfishers, egrets, commorants, darters. And I saw the tail of a Yellow-Bellied Glider, but it took a park's sign to help me figure out what I had seen flying through the forest canopy. The one animal I really wanted to see in the wild -- because they are so unusual -- is the cassowary, a very large, flightless, mean bird. So let me introduce you to some of these critters.

My new love

I'm so fickle. I confess that it didn't take me but one minute to forget all about my sheep "thang" and fall in love with the kangaroos. But how could you not?! Just look at that face and the little tiny arms! And once they start hopping you can't contain your glee. What really surprised me, however, was how small they are. In the interior of the country they are larger. I was never quite sure what the difference between a small kangaroo and a wallaby is, so I don't know if I ever saw a wallaby.

	Count Draculas of the Southern Hemisphere
Not all animals are cuddly-wuddly. You need to stare at this picture for awhile and then you'll realize that the dark bags hanging from the upper branches of the trees are the largest bats you can imagine. They were everywhere, and this was in daylight!

In Cape Tribulation I took a brief boat trip on the Daintree River and even though we were warned not to expect much -- due to tides and season -- we saw two very large crocodiles. One was sunning himself on the riverbank.

But the other one? I clearly saw him (her? wanna lift the tail and find out?!) when I took this picture. Now I can't find him anywhere. In Australia you always ask about the presence of crocs before you go into any body of water other than a bathtub.

On the same boat trip, our eagle-eyed guide found a "Common Tree Snake" (like this name is going to make me feel less anxious?!). But again, I can't find it anywhere in this picture. I know I saw it -- I was pleased that I was willing to look, called it pretty even! -- but now I can't see it anywhere! This put a bit of a damper on subsequent hikes. One of my biggest fears is that a snake will drop out of a tree, not just on me, but down my shirt!

For others, spiders are the things that give them the heebie-jeebies. If that includes you, you don't want to know that this particular one was bigger than my outstretched hand.

This is a goana. Even though they are reptiles, they don't give me the creeps, I suppose because they have legs. But this particular one gave me quite a scare in Cape Tribulation. I was in the kitchen of the backpacker area making a meal. We had been told to close the door to the kitchen so that animals couldn't get in, but I thought that was just at night. I was finished making my meal and turned around to take it outside to the tables when I saw this goana in the doorway, not more than 12 inches away. "Aaahhhh!" I screamed. And the poor thing did a silent goana version of "Aaahhhh!" and turned and scurried off. I will never forget the expression on his face -- it reminded me of E.T. when the little girl finds him in her closet and they both scream with horror.

Fraser Island is known for the large, pure, population of dingos. When you first see one you think it's just like your own pooch, except a little skinny. You even have a isn't-that-cute? reaction before you remember that it's a wild animal -- a very dangerous wild animal. I was on Fraser Island the day that a 9 year old boy was killed by a dingo and his 7 year old brother was mauled. My tour was even near where it happened, although we didn't know about it until we were driving back along the beach in the tour bus and heard it on the news. I had my own dingo encounter. I had to use the bathroom near one of the sights we visited; it was a little removed. I walked very alertly because we had just seen a dingo. When I got to the building with the toilets, I stepped very gingerly, peering around every corner, convinced that dog behavior was the same worldwide and that these dingos were drinking out of the toilets. Assured that no dingo was inside, I made use of the facility and stepped outside. There -- not more than 10-15 feet away -- was El Dingo. I hesitated and just at that moment two women came along the path behind the dingo. I retreated around a wall so the dingo wouldn't feel cornered, but the women kept coming past it. When they got in front of it, I came from behind the wall and watched as they mouthed to me, "Is it following us?" to which I had to nod yes, but motioned them forward. And then I waited til he was no longer interested in us and walked back to the group. I think this picture is of the Scary One.

When I was in Kuranda, I decided to visit a butterfly sanctuary, which I suppose broke my no-domesticated-viewing rule. But I had been enjoying the butterflies in the wild so much that I decided to see them en masse and learn more about them. One of the most disappointing things I learned was about their short life span because I had decided that I wanted to come back as a butterfly. But I got to see butterfly eggs being laid and harvested (the latter of which is happening in the top picture), had more than one butterfly land on me, and witnessed a futile courtship in the bottom picture. In the first picture is the infamous Ulysses butterfly and below it is an equally famous one whose name I can't remember.

Below is a sulphur-crested cockatoo, which is very exciting when you first see one. They are large and white with a yellow crest -- quite regal. But then they open their mouths and don't stop squawking for hours. They have their own version of happy hour. Around dusk, I've seen them gather in a pre-designated hang-out spot and squawk nonstop. You can almost imagine the conversation as each bird arrives. "Blanche! How ya been, girl?!" "Nice coif, Shirley." "Hey Dude, that's my branch you're on!" "No need to get your feathers ruffled, there's room for two." "Hey, is that Mark over there?" "Mark! Mark! Mark! (the closest name to the sound they make).

Finally, may I introduce you to what was a cane toad. Despite the enormous numbers, I never saw one alive, just smooshed ones like this. These toads are famous for several reasons. They were brought in to eat some insect that was causing problems to the crops, but in a failure-to-project-out-all-the-angles (this is were policy heads are needed), it was discovered that the insect and the toad were on different schedules, and the toad did nothing but multiply along with the insects. That and make some very weird people high; these are the toads that daring (and stupid?) people licked.

End of the road and end of the story.