Another Day in Paradise

Charles Darwin’s theories of natural selection are alive and well in the Northern Territory of Australia. The biggest meanest critters prevail over those smaller and less mean on a daily basis. We just paid $100 to have the outside of our house sprayed for Red Back spiders, again. We’d killed 5 of them in a week and one taken up residence in my retractable cloths line. In the U.S. everyone thinks Black Widow spiders are a big deal. Although they can cause death, there is anti-venom available and you have plenty of time to seek medical attention. Australia has so many dangerous and deadly critters that we learn to respect but coexist with the dangerous and only worry about the really deadly ones.

Here in the outback, there are only a few snakes that can’t kill you, so we avoid them at all costs and keep a magnet on the fridge for the professional snake removers. The folks that live up north in the tropics have plenty of deadly stuff around but generally don’t worry about the olive pythons. Although they can grow to several feet long they aren’t known for being aggressive. They’re primary diet is rodents and birds. I guess there’s exceptions to every rule and the news story from this week's Katherine Times illustrates the exception concept, Darwin’s survival theory and the reason that you shouldn’t bother owning a 3 pound dog.




I'm not making this up folks and the story wasn't mysteriously found on-line. It was in a weekly newspaper in Katherine, NT.