Lugging logs ...

The theme of the last two days has been carrying pine logs from one place to another. Our previous tenants left behind over a thousand of them which unfortunately were stored in inconvenient locations. So, I started to move logs three or four at a time (helped occasionally by Cath when it was clear I was becoming delusional) from their current positions and stacking them neatly in our shed (see photo of half of them).  A very conservative calculation suggests this task required about 7.5 kms of walking, half of which was lugging logs. It’s true, I could have made a sensational bonfire, but at the moment they are providing essential comfort as fuel for our wood-burning oven. Of course they require to be hand cut before being burnt, but that is another story … 

It was while I was moving the first pile that I had an interesting encounter. It is well known that things that slither in Tasmania should be avoided. There are only 3 types of snake on the island. In decreasing order of toxicity they are, the tiger, the lowland copperhead and the white-lipped snake (I read with interest that the white-lipped snake is not known to have killed a human).  Anyway,  I digress. The creature I encountered hiding the logs was possibly the fiercest looking arachnid I have ever seen. It was about the size of my palm and it radiated evil (see photo). Luckily Cath wasn’t around as she doesn’t get on with spiders. I was unfazed as spiders don’t slither so I gave it a good once over before placing it over a nearby fence. Come lunch time I consulted the webpage on Tasmanian spiders and was aghast to see that what I had communed with was a funnel-web spider, one of the most venomous of Australia’s spiders.

 

So if you add to snakes and spiders the fact that the jack jumper ant, a species of venomous ant native to Australia, so named because it can jump great distances, is mostly found in Tasmania you pretty much have to avoid everything that slithers, crawls or jumps …