One slight disappointment with Australia so far is that I haven’t really seen too many “Australian animals” yet. By “Australian”, I mean ridiculously deadly and absolutely terrifying. In fairness, I have come across a kangaroo standing in the middle of the Hume Highway while we came blearily along it on our way from Canberra to Melbourne at 3am. I accept that said kangaroo might have been deadly had we not noticed it in time. Further along the road a car full of young boys had had an argument with a wombat and the car had lost. A wombat is kinda like a dog that has been crossed with a bear, or possibly a tank. Small, but built like a Volkswagen.
But no creatures have filled me with horror yet. No snakes, very few spiders so far, not a single croc and no jellyfish. Wow – ten minute of reading on wikipedia has filled me with enough terror to last a while though. Never tangle with Box Jellyfish.
But, over Christmas I did come across a tiny creature whose very nature is abhorrent to me.
The Silverfish
(Taken from wikipedia)
It eats books. That’s what it does. Presumably it used to eat something else, but these days it eats books. I met these monsters while going through a collection of books and they had destroyed at least a dozen. Eating parts of the pages one at a time, in quite a nice pattern. But… books! That’s what the baddies in films do! Well, they burn them, but it amounts to the same thing.
*shudders*
–
Distance swam today: 1km
Tags: Australia, Creepy animals