Yikes! Jumping… ants?

Now that I’m on holidays from work, I thought things would relax a bit, but no. Today, I pulled out the lawnmower and headed to work on my front lawn. Afterall, with family visiting for Christmas, it has to be in decent shape. All of the recent rain has made it hard to keep down. I seen the usual things while cutting, you know, skinks, spiders and even a small frog(he looked like a small brown leopard frog with a yellow throat). I did manage to run over an ant hill. Normally this isn’t a big issue, but it was strong looking and rigid. A few dozen large black ants poured out of it.

My spidey sense was tingling almost immediately. These ants were big, about 9/16″ or 14mm. The ends of their limbs, their mandibles(teeth) and whatnot were orange and they jumped. The spastic short jumping, quick running and strange colours were enough to set off the alarm. I briskly walked inside and describe them to my wife, she had no idea. I went back out with a bottle and carefully collected two for a closer look.

It took no time at all to look them up on the ‘net. Jack Jumper Ants. As a read down, it gets from ugly, to bad, to worse. Jack jumper ants are stinging ants. Meaning they do not bite but like wasps and such, have stingers. Not so bad… oh, very aggressive. We have lots of wasps and bees in Canada, nothing scary. Stings may case swelling, fever, lowered blood pressure, blisters and in cases of multiple stings, death.

Then I read that jack jumper ants are responsible for more deaths in Tasmania than spiders, sharks and snakes combined. Well, I was out there pretty quick with our best poison. I can’t really appreciate them being on my front lawn, especially where the children play. They don’t look so nice either.

Read out them for yourself at Wikipedia

One from my front lawn.

Kanagroo Encounter

On my way to work this morning, I think I experienced an authentic Australian thing. I see kangaroos quite often on my travels back and forth to work (I see maybe 5-10 a week).  Today was a bit different though. Not far outside of town, a big kangaroo hopped across the road. I slowed down quickly because they tend to move in groups (called mobs). The second ‘roo I came across went across the road then quickly darted back into the center.

I’ve heard a couple of times from the guys I work with that roos will sometimes  run in front of your car for a fair amount of time. This was such a case. It hopped along in front of me, moving back and forth a bit but never moving too far to either side.  I suppose the stories about roos being caught inbetween headlights are true because it hopped in front of me for about 500 meters at about 37kph. It wasn’t full grown.

Spitfires

One day, after coming home from work, I was cleaning some garbage from the car. I opened up the garage door to put it in the bin when I noticed something between a few cardboard boxes. It took a few seconds to focus on it, then I noticed that the sort of irregular black mass was in fact moving. I was more then a bit unnerved at this small heap of dark coloured worms in my garage. I moved a couple of boxes and I could see that they were not quite worms. They were dark green, long(about 7-9cm, 2-3″). They had six strong legs near the front and when disturbed, had a yellowish coloured goo form around their mouths. Once they started curling their back ends up over their heads, I had a strong feeling they were … bad. I had my wife boil some water and I scooped them up with a shovel. I poured boiling water over the lot which then smelled a lot like eucalypt oil.

Turns out they eat eucalypt, with a vengeance. “Spitfire” is the nickname given to the sawfly larva. I can never recall seeing a sawfly at this point, but apparently their larva are around in large numbers. They can defoliate entire trees, so they are considered a pest. The larva feed on eucalypt trees for their entire lives (which makes them bad tasting for birds as well) and when old enough, come down from the trees in large groups and burrow into the ground to move into the next stage of development.

I started asking guys at work about them and what to do. Apparently, they get their name from the liquid they spit out of their mouths when disturbed. Rumor has it they can actually spit it some distance, but I’ve not seen anything to confirm it. Common belief is that they are poisonous to some extent as well. I’ve had people tell me that skin irritation or perhaps blindness could be a result of being spat at. A common problem, someone jokingly said to me that maybe 9 out of 10 bushfires are started from someone pouring gasoline(petrol here) on them and lighting it.

http://www.amonline.net.au/factSheets/sawflies.htm

Better late than never

Perhaps a bit lazy on my part, but I never got around to keeping in touch with family and friends I left behind in Canada, as much as I thought I should. The relative enourmous size of the task had me shying away from it entirely on a regular basis. So, that’s why I have created this blog. As a place to keep family and friends up to date about what’s happening to me and my family down here in Australia.

I hope you like it.