aka R’acquel

The other day, my son reported that he had seen a yellow snake with brown spots. We’ve been on the alert because a friend spotted a brown snake in their backyard recently. After some researching on Google to try an identify what this snake could’ve been, my husband spotted the culprit who’s made it’s home beside Mitch’s workshed in the backyard.

It panned out to be a blue-tongued lizzard, but i’ve got to admit - this creature did freak me out a fair bit because it did look like a snake when his legs were being obscured by the leaves (erm - hence the ability to take a close-up shot after i knew that it definitely wasn’t a snake - despite my husband telling me, “IT’S NOT A SNAKE” - i didn’t believe Mitch until i could see this creature’s legs with my own eyes. Just put your fingers on the monitor to cover this creature’s legs in the photo and you’ll see what i mean). It’s tongue was a bright electric neon blue colour. I’ve never seen one this big before, about 7-8cm? diameter in the trunk of it’s body - quite a monster compared to the other’s i’ve seen in the bushtracks.

The wildlife is getting noticeably wilder here and i suspect that the large influx of high rainfall we had a few weeks ago has had something to do with it. Perhaps it’s also paired with the former tenant/owner’s last pesticidal treatment around the house wearing off as well. The school grounds are getting leeches. There’s more different spiecies of large ants scrawling about and heaps of spiders now - many are breeding & laying egg sacks everywhere. My husband spotted a red-back spider under the BBQ, another one near the water meter. They’re venom is poisonous so we need to be on guard. They don’t scare me as much as the funnel web spiders but i continue to be vigilent in the garden whilst mowing & cleaning up.

Here’s hoping that our new local lizzard has the time of it’s life by helping us to tackle the increase in creepy crawlies everywhere. I imagine that’s why he/she has arrived to our home, as it’s such a royal banquet over here atm.

We’re currently going though a heat-wave/dry-spell although we’re not feeling it that much over here in the mountains. The Leura Flies aren’t very psycho at the moment. I encountered one of them in the backyard today - so a storm is likely to be comming soon, but i think it’s going to be a few days. I guess i’ll know better when the flies start to get uber-psycho.

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Hectic with work & managing my son’s needs at home & school. It’s going well, although my spirits are somewhat low & depressed today. I need to decompress from it all - hence taking the moment to time-out in blog-world but i’ll be booking myself into the gym to let it all rip tonight.