Dangerous critter time.....

"American vocabulary", perhaps, I didn't really think about it. It's just a quote and I like what it says :-))))

Gotta love the wildlife; that's part of the reason I don't live in the suburbs. Better the chatter of birds than neighbours. The swallows are the only thing that bleep me; trying to nest on the rafters over the verandah and bleep ting everywhere (any ideas?).

Shotgun LOL

Dunno about the swallows. I try to keep the spoggies out by blocking off all holes with wire netting or old rags. But they still find places around the outside of the house to nest. The spoggies eat 20% of my grape harvest each year. This year I have managed to borrow an air rifle and am going to dispatch them when SWMBO isnt looking. "Oh NO, you are shooting my happy babies"....bugger the babies they're eating our heritage grapes!!!. It all started with two sparrows and now some years later we have a whole clan.

There was a goo you were able to buy called Hot Foot or something like that. If a bird sat on it, it would burn the feet(not physically) of ht ebird and they wouldfind a perch elsewhere. One could put grease on the areas the swallows want to build a nest? Just a thought...lol

Cheers

Use a hose, continual destruction of their mud nests end up getting the better of them. But you have to be persistant.
Kev

The word is the Ross River mossies are going to a problem this summer.

Re the swallows, I had them wanting to nest in the "C" section rafter of my carport, I put cheap gutter guard mesh in the section & thet worked fine, after a few years of not having the heart to smash their nest down once they had built it.
I guess you good do a similar thing with timber rafters, cut the mesh in half lengthways, & put it on the face of the rafter up to the roof cladding.

BTW their are plenty of snakes about in the Vic High Country already.

I just learn to live with them. Ive had a RedBack living in my dash for over 2 yrs, occassionly go without a shower for a week, once the web is loaded with flies I start washing again.

and.... even more interesting I reckon.... it isn't Frankenstein logic... it's Frankenstein science. Cloning, stem cells, genetic manipulation... mate that is just what Frankenstein was doing with his monster. .... I quite liked that monster.... maybe it's not all bad.

Bware,

Try some rubber snakes hanging off the rafters etc. Worked for us, haven't had a swallow for years, though they're still in the area.

Hooroo...

Gramps, perhaps the most convenient solution LOL

Willem, I've tried oil LOL I actually used a blend of old engine oil and chilli paste but I think it just spiced up their love life! I've currently got an old mozzie net tacked up there, a mobile (not a phone, the things that hang from a ceiling) in the shape of a large bird and all they do is try to build further along the rafter. They're screwing with my mind LOL

Kev, nest destruction to no avail....

Troop-a-dour, a problem for swallows? LOL

Bob Y, you might be on to something there, if that doesn't work I could find a real python or perhaps try Gramps' solution ;-)))

If you knock the nests down they just rebuild them, so let them build them then put a stone, about golf ball size, in the nest and they will p... off never to return,
guaranteed. My grandfathers remedy and it still works today, do try it.

Scrubcat.

Same feelings here. I sometimes have to kill a tiger or southern copperhead near the house, but usually don't worry about the red bellied blacks. Like the snake further out in the paddock.

Riding bikes across England a month ago we came upon an ADDER..... stopped a pommy jogger to ask if it was what I thought it was. He said 'yes' and that he had been jogging every day for the last five years and had never seen one!

We were riding along a canal path from Leeds to Keighley ["keethly"]

My impression of Europe was ..... "Where are the birds?.. Where's the wildlife?"

think those adders are pretty rare there - well spotted

You probably saw it because you look down! We were in Litchfield at Bluey Rockhole (?sp) where there must have been 40 people mainly from the UK by the accents. Almost none of them even noticed a three foot water monitor wander up the path checking out their packs. The guide had to point it out. It had walked within 3 feet of almost every one of them and only avoided getting trodden on because it was quick to get out of the way. I'm all for leaving the local fauna alone but you should at least be aware that it is there. If you stand on some critter it normally takes action to get you to move.

I'm not saying that all visitors from overseas are like this as I have met plenty who were very interested and I am sure some ozzies would be much the same. However, I was completely amazed at how detatched this group was from the environment they were in.

Steve

Agreed, Davoe.
I was reluctant to kill the spider but SWMBO had already seen it.

Don't kill black snakes, they help to keep down the numbers of tiger snakes by eating their young.

Snakes kill so many feral rodents. Disease carried by rodents have killed umpteen times more people than snakes. Snakes are welcome in my yard.

Like the tourists who didn't see the wildlife, I found this fellow (if the link works) on the path to the Devil's Kitchen near Pt. Arthur. People were heading to see the landscape features without looking down. They were surprised when i said, "Hey, look what you nearly trod on". After he posed for the photo, i told him to go into the bushes, which he did, but must have come out again, because after i got back to the car park, we were talking to a couple of Ulysses Bikers when one of their ladies raced back white faced - "there's a SNAKE on the path".

We saw a few Tassie tigers when bush walking. They are quite small.

!MPG:23!