Skink Watch 2009: Success!

One day way back in February, I walked outside to check the mail and spotted a reptilian flash out of the corner of my eye. This was different from the usual geckos, lizards and skinks that scatter when I walk around outside.

This thing I saw was different. Specifically, this thing was much bigger. I only saw a flash of its scaly abdomen, but that trunk was about 2-3" in diameter! Enormous!! I ran inside, grabbed The Wildlife of Greater Brisbane and turned to the Lizards chapter. I decided that we had a Blue-tongued skink living in our garden. This was Day 1 of Skink Watch 2009. Every day that I went out to check the mailbox, I kept my eyes peeled for our blue-tongued amigo, but didn't see him again until a couple of weeks ago.

We had some people over for a winter BBQ and for the first time in five months, our skinky little friend showed his slithery head! It's not like this lizard runs around with his blue tongue hanging out. He has to be pestered before he'll flash it. We decided to be good neighbors and just let him be. There's a whole web page dedicated to these animals, so if you want to see the blue tongue, just follow the link. After seeing the photos on that site, I'm kind of glad we didn't pester him.

Can you imagine finding this in your garden? For size comparison:

This picture makes us look like our baby is in imminent danger. Don't worry - the baby wasn't in there and I always shake the pram before I put her in it to wake up any animals sleeping in it. (Oh, and Mr. Blue Tongue eats fruit, flowers, eggs, snails and carrion.)

Skink Watch 2009 is over. I'm glad he paused and let me snap a few pictures. Now he's out in our garden somewhere. I hope he plans to stay!

We also discovered that our funny little possum like to take naps in the laundry room.

You can see her disinctive "jelly bean-shaped poop" in the foreground.

Thanksgiving, wildlife, signs of Christmas and baby update

Thanksgiving feast

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday with Nate's boss (an Aussie), his American wife and their kids. We had turkey, roasted veggies, stuffing and cranberry sauce. We made a rum raisin apple pie. Nate made the crust - we couldn't find vegetable shortening in the supermarket, so we had to make do with a block of lard - and I made the filling and put it all together. It was my first pie with a pastry crust and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Apple pie, ice cream, cheesecake, bottles of wine (emptied by the end of the night).

We are getting used to living in a house without screens and with large gaps between the floorboards and under the doors. We've got geckos living behind the fridge, plenty of bumbling beetles that come in for a visit and end up on their backs, unable to right themselves, and ringtail possums walking across the roof (possums haven't come in yet, but I saw one saunter across the carport roof about three feet from the open kitchen window).

The possums here are much cuter than their American opossum cousin:

(photos from Wikipedia possum page)

I had a big heebie-jeepie encounter the other night. After dinner, I saw a small beast scurry across the kitchen floor and towards the trash can. I figured it was just a (very fast-moving) cockroach. I turned on the light with Nate's cockroach-smashing sandal in hand and this is what I saw:

A lot bigger than it looks.

Yikes! Check out those chelicerae!

We grabbed our copy of the Wildlife of Greater Brisbane (thanks Pete and Penny!) and flipped through to identify this new visitor. It wasn't too hard to find it - it's the first species listed in the spider chapter because it's pretty common in households. It was a Brown huntsman spider. We are a spider-friendly household, so after shining a flashlight and bugging it for a while, we left it alone and minutes later, it scurried out the front door, just as it had entered.

We learned that the bite, although painful, isn't too venomous, but that if you squish it, the explosion could lead to a couple days of blindness. I can't imagine squishing something that size anyway!

Signs of Christmas are everywhere. Santa Claus is featured in every other TV commercial and there are fake trees popping up all over.

Brisbane's Christmas tree

The far more festive Poinciana trees are blooming all over town. I think they fit the season and climate much better than a plastic pine tree.

One of many blooming Poinciana trees in and around Brissie

Baby Update!
We had a ultrasound last week (required by the hospital) and the tech told us that bub is pretty big already - not fat, but with above average sized head and femurs (femora). She estimated that bub weighs about 3.5 kg (the same size as the turkey we ate for Thanksgiving). Bub certainly feels pretty big to me. I've got those long legs firmly planted in my ribs and that above-average head sitting right on my bladder. Really, really looking forward to finally meeting bub!

I'm starting to feel (and look?!) more and more like this:

Brisbane public transportation signage

Pregnant goat from the business end (as drawn by my grandmother)

We met our neighbors yesterday and found out that the mother/wife in the family is a former midwife at the hospital I will be attending. What are the odds?!

Here I am just this morning with two weeks to go:

Thank goodness for big t-shirts. The maternity shirts don't quite cover the belly anymore!

Nate (two weeks to go until daddyhood) showing off his sympathy belly - yeah right!