Happy Australia Makes You Die Day!: seanan

Happy Australia Makes You Die Day!

Once again, my big list o' holidays* says that today is a holiday that is very important to me, and makes a big impact on my life. Maybe not as big an impact as Virus Appreciation Day (October 3rd), which I celebrate every year by not unleashing the pandemic, or Cuckoo Warning Day (June 21st), which is best celebrated by evolving parasitic wasps into telepathic humanoids, but still, it's important to me.

Today is Australia Day.

So today we celebrate the existence of Australia, the continent which proves that evolution did a lot of drugs when it was young. Today we celebrate the fact that Australia is full of things that want to make us all die, the fact that Australia is frequently on fire, and the fact that Australia essentially hates humanity. Specific things to celebrate about Australia include venomous snakes, spiders the size of dinner plates, marsupials, really interesting money, the koala (which will totally rip your face off if you poke it), and the cone snail, which is the size of a man's thumb and can kill you extremely dead. This is why you do not fuck around with the native wildlife of Australia.

Tonight I will celebrate by going to Kate's house to eat tasty Indian food and tell her things she never wanted to know about the many ways in which Australia can render you extremely deceased. There will be expository hand-gestures, and possibly even diagrams. Kate puts up with a lot from me, really. And later this year, I'll belatedly celebrate Australia Day by actually going to Melbourne, Australia, for the glory of WorldCon.

Thank you for existing, Australia! Today is your day. Your venomous, deadly, kicking-your-ass, being eaten by koalas day.

Hooray Australia!

(*I have a list containing a holiday for every single day of the year. Some days have more than one holiday listed. The world needs more excuses for a party.)

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princess_kessie

January 27 2010, 06:12:57 UTC 7 years ago

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See, most suburbanites (read: most of the population) can go their entire lives without seeing one of the scary spiders. I lived in Sydney and surrounds for eight years and didn't see a single funnel web. I didn't see my first redback until I'd moved out of home at 17, and later that same year got the bejeebus scared out of me by the one and only huntsman spider I've ever seen - and it was definitely tea-plate sized - but also incredibly harmless.

The only spiders we tend to see with any regularity here in the Perth southern suburbs are white-tailed spiders, golden orb weavers and your common garden variety wolf spiders. Not much of anything else (although there are hundreds of varieties of orbweavers, all commonly called garden spiders, and which pop up in almost every garden at night). Perhaps we're just lucky...

aineotter

January 27 2010, 15:35:46 UTC 7 years ago

Hm...the picture you've got of the golden orb weaver looks more like an Argiope spp. (aurantia?), I thought that was the common name for Nephila spp?
I'd love to see Nephila, they're beautiful big spiders, plus their silk was the first one sequenced. Probably because of their size, making silk glands *much* easier to dissect out...(this, I've done with much smaller spiders. It's not easy. It's also why I have this deal with the spider gods that I don't kill any spiders outside of research; that, and it's just plain bad luck to kill spiders).

January 28 2010, 01:42:03 UTC 7 years ago

Meh - I'm an arachnaphobe, not an arachnologist, and that was one of the images Goodle kindly provided that looked most like the spiders I see in my garden, and which have been called Golden Orb Weavers all my life. *shrugs*

Thanks for the correction :)

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