I thought I was in cruise control with this Aussie thing. Yes, it’s hotter and it’s got some very, very noisy birds but so far, no snakes, no spiders and the only injuries have been to bit’s of the young one as she scales the back fence to visit her friend. But I was wrong about Australian wildlife. Things happen here that I’ve never seen happen in Christchurch. Take this morning. I get up for breakfast at about 7:30, I know there is bacon in the fridge and I go ahead and fry up a bit. Sophie comes in and sits at the breakfast bar, sighs and announces in the tone of voice one reserves for a boring tv programme, ‘We’ve got maggots.” There’s a breakfast killer right there but to my credit I did not go mental. Even when she told me it was one wiggling between her toes that made her look at the floor. Which of course, made me look at the floor and they were everywhere. Humping and slithering to some unknown destination somewhere in either the kitchen or the living room and failing that, moving on towards the bedrooms. With my inner hysteria fighting the need to show adult-like control, I got down on my knees and retrieved the brush and shovel from under the cupboard. Ha Ha Ha went the maggots who refused to be swept anywhere. Vaccuum cleaner! And even then it took the short pipe sucking at maximum suck, directly on top of the unwanted guests to get them to move. For quite a long time after, all I could hear was “There’s another one!” as the stragglers came out of the cracks between the floorboards. I now think I could be Australian. I got the kids to chuck out the rubbish- “And tie a knot in the top of the bag!” I shouted as it headed off down stairs then I got the fly spray nozzle to nozzle with the vaccuum cleaner hose and squirted it down the pipe, just in case. And it gave me great satisfaction to walk past the bin on the way out this afternoon to hear the steady hum of a thousand flies hopefully wrapped in a plastic bin liner, dying a slow and horrible death.
Robyn Anderson 