Bugs and Bugs

One thing the climate here is good for is bugs. They abound and get into and onto almost everything. I have no pictures of the endless streams of ants of various shapes and sizes that abound most everywhere. And I also have no photos of the cockroaches that I have almost directly encountered barefooted and sleepy in many houses- particularly bathrooms. They are amazingly speedy critters. On our trip we saw many termite mounds which no doubt provided nice treats for the mammalian egg-laying echindas. These I saw in zoos but alas saw none munching on termites in the wild. While flies like me- in particular my nose and face, mozzies and ants do not. It took some effort to lure the one you see onto my foot from which it desired only escape. As you can see it is rather large, though not the largest I have seen.

Tonight Trina happened to notice what initially looked like a spot on some curtains in the house. On closer inspection it turned out to be a mother spider with numbers of young. The spiders here are all catholic and do not believe in birth control. None of us had ever seen this before so it was great luck to see this.

My friend Allen emailed me a while back and advised me to try Moreton Bay Bugs (it is a bay near Brisbane). Initially I was rather confused as bugs, save for the ones that fly into my mouth, are not the most common items in my diet. As I lean more and more toward vegetarianism I have tried to cut down on my bug consumption. But as it turns out Aussies call small crustaceans and lobsters "bugs". Not a bad term when you consider how they look. The one on the left is not a slipper lobster which is what the Moreton Bay ones are. It is rather a closeup of the freshwater stream crustacean which was barely visible in one of the Green Mountains pictures posted a while ago.

When in Noosa I think it was I did have a chance to try Moreton Bay Bugs at a Thai restaurant. Unfortunately I was a bit sick and didn't feel up to eating anything other than some soup. I do hope to try them here in Sydney. After all a lobster by any other name- namely "bug" would no doubt taste as sweet. I am not sure about smell.