…now, this is basically what happend to us. I’m sorry? You weren’t listening? The internet was what? Off? Well, is it on now? Yes? Good, let me bring you up to speed then!
Our little spider adventure in the car left us longing for more wildlife encounters, so we decided to visit the Adelaide zoo. This zoo is known for its two pandas, which are the only two pandas on the southern hemisphere. Pandas, known for their desire to become extinct (take a look at their diet if you don’t believe me), somehow made it into the 21st century and let me assure you that they look very cuddly. There’s really not a lot I can tell you about these creatures, but if you can cope with the many, many appeals made by Jimmy Wales and friends, there is a great site I can redirect you to that has all the information you may need.
After the panda exhibit we walked around and took pictures until we were tired and needed a break. We bought ourselves some drinks and sat down on a bench, conveniently located in the shade. So far the day had been great and that would be all I would have to say about it, if it weren’t for the little house of horrors that came wandering by as we were enjoying our drinks. Do you know that feeling, that something very disturbing is happening in the corner of your eye, but that you just are unwilling to recognise it, just to shield yourself from mental scarring? That is exactly what happened to us. We were, of course, forced to act upon the situation after a few nanoseconds, to avoid the pending doom. After we jumped away from the bench, we turned around to see what we had just escaped. Keep in mind that at this point, we didn’t know the first thing about Australian spiders, so we weren’t able to properly assess the situation at that time. We just saw a hairy spider, almost the size of an iPhone, but way fatter, in fight with a huge red wasp-like creature. The fight wasn’t really a fight, as we discovered moments later, but in reality the wasp was dragging the spider along. Ah! I can hear you think: “Shouldn’t that be the other way around, aren’t spiders supposed to catch insects?”, well, apparently, all bets are off in this country. As we watched the little show the wasp and the spider were performing, a little cute birdie landed next to us to keep us company, or actually, to snatch the spider from the wasp, as happened only seconds later. The wasp looked seriously pissed after this, so we decided not to stay and watch what would happen next.
The whole situation left us terrified, but curious, so we went onto the Google to try and find out what we had seen. Australia, as it appears, is home to the spider wasp (which, coincidentally, is a great word to replace ‘spider man’ in the Spider Man tune -or the Spider Pig tune, if you’ve seen the Simpsons movie: ‘Spider Wasp, Spider Wasp, does whatever a Spider Wasp does…’). Our particular spider wasp managed to catch a huntsman spider. The spider wasn’t dead, it was just paralysed and destined to become a brand new incubator for the wasp’s offspring. The bird, in hindsight, probably did it a favour by killing and eating it, as a quick dead is, as far as I’m concerned, preferable to slowly being eaten alive by a wasp larvae for months only to see your abdomen burst open (and then dying) as a new spider wasp emerges from it. Just today I bought myself an electric insect zapper, so I should be safe.
I’m probably leaving out a few important details, but as of Tuesday 29 November we’ve leased a beautiful house in Mount Barker, SA! It took quite some time to find something the both of us felt comfortable with living in for the coming 12 months, but this house meets all requirements besides having a pool. Though the pool will be missed, the parrots in the garden do make up for it a little bit. Our first order of business was getting the power reconnected to the house, as the prospect of going through the house at night by the lights of our telephones wasn’t really appealing. Next was getting the phone line and then internet connected, which, as it turns out, takes quite some time here. Tuesday saw Yvo waiting for the electricity guy (which would visit us between 7am and 7pm) and me driving to IKEA Adelaide to buy beds and get them delivered to our home. Wednesday we went shopping for a fridge and now we’re just waiting for our stuff to arrive (this saturday), to clear customs and quarantine inspection (3 weeks minimum) and, of course, delivery. Thank god we’re in the Adelaide Metropolitan Area (which is only slightly smaller than Holland’s Randstad), so delivery will be free of charge.
I’ll try to go into more detail regarding the past two weeks later on, but for now, this is basically what happened to us.
