You die in seconds

Australian drop bear

I had to go to Petco today to buy another dog bed for downstairs. Just to clear up any confusion – at night  Georgia sleeps upstairs in our bedroom in a bed which is inside a dog crate.

Downstairs she sleeps in another dog bed – which is exactly the same as the one upstairs. Except that now Sissi has decided that Georgia is harmless – and probably a bit dim – she has started sleeping in Georgia’s bed downstairs.

So that Georgia does not have to sleep on the floor I have bought another bed – exactly the same as the other two – to put in the kitchen for Georgia.

The people who make the beds are probably at this very moment putting on extra staff to cope with the demand.

We have had web worms in our mulberry tree. I had never heard of web worms until we saw the nests and looked them up on Google. They may or may not do any harm to the tree – there is some uncertainty about this – but in any event they make monster webs and it  looks like giant spiders live in our tree - and I just cannot deal with spiders.

I have never been the same since I was about five years old and my brother was chasing a large huntsman spider around the ceiling with a broom. He knocked it off the ceiling and it fell down the front of my shirt. This was a scarifying and unforgettable experience.

Lenny also has arachnophobia – possibly from the time when he was much younger and I asked him to clean the spider webs off the windows – and then clean the windows.  He used three cans of spider killer – so the spiders sort of drowned rather than being poisoned –and the area around that house is still a dead zone without bugs or spiders or any other living thing.

Anyway since then he has been very wary of spiders – which is good in Australia because we have spiders the size of kittens that can jump 10 feet and bury their fangs in your eyes.

The good part is that you die in seconds.

I was reading something on the Internet the other day and it listed all the venomous creatures in Australia – and there are a lot of them. Snakes, spiders, jelly fish, Irukandji, sharks, crocodiles, bunyips, drop bears, giant kangaroos that can disembowel you with one stroke of their massive paws -  and the list goes on.

In Vienna the most dangerous creature was a hedgehog. In Indianapolis it is a squirrel.

Of course around here the most common form of death is gunshot but I have read the statistics and have found that most homicides are carried out by family members.

Which is why I will not let my family visit me in Indianapolis  - and I keep a close eye on Cate.

I think I know

Antonio has finished and he and John have left – albeit temporarily. The only thing that remains is the sounds of Spanish songs ringing in my ears.

Whenever we part company we know that we see each other again real soon as more bits and pieces of this ancient house need fixing. There are very few things I can do because they mostly require carpentry skills and I am not good at all at that sort of stuff.

Georgia is a bit more relaxed now because her bed is back where it should be in the lounge room. But she is of a somewhat nervous disposition and when I took her to Petco on Tuesday she peed on the floor of the grooming salon.

She may have been worried about the roasting of dogs to death that Petco has engaged in previously but I told her that those machines have been  removed and there has not been a dog roasting since January.

There is a food festival in Indy on the weekend and are going to savor the delights. There will be no corn dogs or giant donuts – just lots of good stuff being made in Indy from local ingredients - and there some really good restaurants. We may even sample the local wine – but do not expect too much.

In the USA there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth because of the journalist and photographer who were killed by a nutter. The cable stations have been talking about this non stop for 24 hours. Oh why does this happen in America so often? They ask. I think I know the answer and  I am prepared to disclose it as soon as Donald Trump is president.

In the meantime – and I am not making this up – our peanut brained prime minister in Australia has been panic stricken about his ratings – which are lower than a snake’s testicles.

Needing something to distract the masses he announced that President Obama has asked Australia to help bomb those bits in the middle east which contain terrorists. There are a lot of places from which to chose and our six planes over there will be a bit stretched.

Turns out that – needing a real distraction form his abysmal performance – peanut brain asked president Obama to ask him (peanut brain) to participate in the war on Isis. And he is considering it.

Spare me. 

A turkey four feet tall

So we went to the State Fair and it was exactly how I thought it would be. There are more types of food than you would think possible – including some which to us were incomprehensible.

One of these was funnel cakes - which of course we had to try. It is had to describe so I have included photo. It tastes a lot like a donut.

I also tried the corn dog which was much to corny for my liking and I had a hot dog which was up to the usual high standard of dogs in America. There was simply too much to try – and some of them – like the turkey legs – were impossible to contemplate. These must come from turkeys that are four feet tall.

 

We saw dogs jumping hurdles – this is apparently called ‘agility’. This is not something Georgia could do. She can surely jump but is not good at following directions.

We saw a lot of very large horses and very many rabbits. There was a whole pavilion of rabbits. Some of them had won prizes for something – I just cannot imagine what. I man let us pet one and it was very soft – perhaps it got a prize for this.

Cate offered to let me watch the tractor pulling but I had had enough excitement for one day.