The window lottery

Seen over the past week:

A hare the size and shape of a small terrier albeit one with long ears. It was grazing the thick grass next to my vegetable path. Apparently, like my children, it is not as fond of rocket (arugula) as I am. Rocket, parsley, mint, thyme, rosemary and lemon balm all flourish. Is there a spicy theme here and is it protecting my garden or is the lush grass simply too succulent to ignore?

An enormous bearded dragon lizard grazing in the same spot. It would look around, nibble grass then articulate itself to a new position. I say articulate because it is hard to describe how these lizard move. Spindly legs that seem to all move independently lift the large spiny body and it somehow progresses. Mr. Blithe nearly ran over this fellow when he was mowing. It pretended to be a stick that had somehow mysteriously leapt into the grass and wasn’t going to move. On seeing it eating grass, I had to google “What do bearded dragons eat?” and found out that they are omnivorous. Insects, mice, small birds and greenery. Apparently if you keep one as a pet, you should make it a nice salad regularly. The site didn’t say what kind of dressing they prefer.

A white bird of prey (kestrel, goshawk? Ed. note: a black-shouldered kite according to my neighbour) plummeting from the sky to snatch something tiny and formerly squeaking out of the grass.

Frogs of every size and shape from shiny green monsters blinking solemnly at me to tiny thumbnail size grey leapers to a medium sized grey frog strolling through the bathroom trailing a dust bunny. Our new carpet is exactly the shade of grey-green of the tiniest frogs and you can only track them by their leaps.

A gloriously patterned python of some kind sliding across the top of our water tanks. I was preparing vegetables and heard something just outside the window. The snake slid across the tanks, investigated the downpipe and disappeared “up roof.” I have no idea where it is, but I suspect it was using our house as a highway to somewhere else (I hope).

Wasps and weird flying things of all descriptions. The continuing humidity (what the weather service describes in today’s forecast as “sultry”) is a bonanza to everything creepy-crawly. The latest invasion has been of black crickets dive-bombing through the living room in the evenings. Not the best accompaniment to a Dr. Who rerun about winged bat-like creatures taking over the world. I’m not sure why the world was complaining – they made the schoolkids docile and smart and everyone got to eat lots of chips. I, on the other hand, had no chips and had to stalk the room swatting at the creatures and removing them.

One tiny gecko in a pot plant and one large gecko somewhere else calling to “baby.” Given that Blithe Boy when younger could not distinguish between a gecko and a kookaburra, you get an idea of the volume of sound a gecko can produce usually just when you are drifting off.

A wallaby paused on the dam wall out the back of the house looking at us then quietly resuming its grazing. Somehow it seemed to sense that we meant no harm or perhaps it just knew that it could disappear into the maze of gullies and escape.