Timothy thought about that old saying, "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." He had been trapped in his sensory deprivation unit in his Upper West Side apartment for three days now. Something had gone wrong with the latch.
Worse: there was no light. He couldn't see his own hands in front of his face.
"The darkest hour is just before the dawn," he thought, over and over again.
After five days Timothy imagined he heard a rooster crowing. Then he died.
I had a great-uncle who used to say that a lot. "Time heals all wounds." Until he fell down the back steps of his house and broke both his hips when he was 92. His body wasn't discovered for six days. His wristwatch had bite marks on it.
This has been another episode of "Old Sayings…Reconsidered."
No, that's not the title of my latest country song, it's a too-true story with a happy, if a bit disgusting, end.
I woke up last night to a slight stinging sensation right about in the center of my back. I then felt the unmistakable, almost not there—but definitely there—feeling of tiny legs crawling slowly on my skin.
I live in Australia now, as you may have noticed from the title of this blog and whatnot. When you get bit by something in Australia, there are significantly higher odds than would be in any other place in the world that the thing that just bit you is either a) harmful; b) really, really harmful; or c) you won't even meet the EMTs—and the hospital's next door!—harmful.
Okay, still, it's probably not a deadly spider. It could be a—well, look, I'm lying here in bed and have just been bitten by something that's still on my back. Could we discuss this later? Okay? Good.
I thought that, under the circumstances, rather than burst out of bed flailing my arms and legs and sending the sheets flying and scaring the crap out of Christine—all of which did occur to me—it might be best to identify whatever had just bitten me. So it could be noted properly in the obituary and all. Luckily Christine is a very light sleeper. I quietly muttered, "Christine," and she immediately said, "What?"
"Turn the light on."
She started to move toward me…and whatever was on my back.
"No! No! No! Turn the light on please."
You know how you say "please" in situations like this? It doesn't mean "please" at all, it's just a lot faster to say please than saying all the other things you'd really like to say.
Christine moved away from me and got off the bed. We still don't have bedside lamps, so she found her glasses, stumbled to the door, found the switch, turned on the light, and headed back to the bed.
"What's on my back?"
"Oh shit, a cockroach."
Oh for chrissake. There I was, bravely lying still while the most deadly creature on eight legs steadily made its way toward my jugular vein to deliver its final, lethal, bite—and it's a cockroach. How ignoble.
The next minute or so consisted of:
• exiting bed
• exiting cockroach from bed with a flick of the wrist
• watching cockroach land high up on the curtains
• watching Christine search floor for cockroach, shoe in hand
• sitting on bed, pondering not telling Christine that cockroach is in the curtains and going back to sleep
• finally flicking the cockroach off the curtains and onto floor
• watching Christine…a little too eagerly…smash cockroach to pudding
• way to eagerly
• going back to bed.
Well, it could have been deadly. There is no sign of a bite this morning. Perhaps it just gave me a nip.
According to Stoy Hedges, an entomologist and Manager of Technical Services at Terminix International, "They [cockroaches] have been known to bite but only in rare circumstances, when they have exploded into large populations. They are known to crawl onto people's ears, bite off their eyebrows and things like that. They are looking for food, but that's when they are in large populations. They only do this when there is no food available."
A previously unknown live recording of a 21-year-old Bob Dylan taped at the Brandeis First Annual Folk Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts, on May 10, 1963,Bob Dylan In Concert - Brandeis University 1963captures the rollicking wit, deadpan delivery and driving intensity of the young artist's on-stage persona in an assortment of end-of-the-world songs -- none of them commercially available at the time -- performed in front of an appreciative audience two weeks prior to the release ofThe Freewheelin' Bob Dylan(May 27, 1963).
TheBob Dylan In Concert - Brandeis University 1963concert tape was discovered recently in the archives of the noted music writer andRolling Stoneco-founder Ralph J. Gleason, where it sat on a shelf for more than forty years. "It had been forgotten, until it was found last year in the clearing of the house after my mother died," said Toby Gleason, Ralph's son. "It's a seven inch reel-to-reel that sounds like it was taped from the mixing desk."
Yesterday I snapped a photo of a bird on a fence post in the nearby suburb of Dee Why.
I had absolutely no idea what it was, so I posted the photo on Facebook and asked for help. This morning I found several replies. Thanks, everyone.
The concesus seemed to be swallow. BPaul gave me the family name, Hirundindae, and I soon found the Welcome Swallow (Hirundo neoxena):
Colour: metallic blue-black on top and light to dark grey on its breast and belly. Its forehead, throat and upper breast are rust in colour. It has grey legs and feet, and its eyes and bill are black.
That sounded close, but the throat color is off—but it's followed by this:
A young Welcome Swallow has shorter tail feathers than an adult and its forehead and throat are a creamy beige (instead of rust).
And this:
Swift: is larger and has longer and more-curved wings, and rarely lands. Welcome Swallows are commonly seen sitting on perches.
I'll keep looking, but I think what we have here is a young Welcome Swallow.
I hate and love zoos. Some I just hate, I guess. But many are very good at what zoos are supposed to be good at: fascinating humans while educating them about animals while being exceptionally mindful of the care of those animals. On that note, Christine and I went for a drive up north yesterday and came across the Australia Reptile Park. We were tired of driving and said What the hell and paid the $24 (!) to get in.
We will be going back. Possibly to work as volunteers.
First, a sign we saw in the park, helpfully illustrating the life cycle of the tasmanian devil (click to enlarge):
In case you didn't get that, kids:
Look at those faces: Mating is fun! And a little naughty! Like I said: educating and fascinating!
Moving on: The Australia Reptile Park is one of the country's most important wildlife parks/zoos. For starters: It's where the venom from what is commonly called the most deadly spider in the world, the Sydney funnel web spider, is "milked" from spiders in order to develop antivenom. (Here's how they do it!) That antivenom first became available in 1980: before that, deaths from funnel web bites weren't exactly common, but they did happen, and if you didn't die you suffered horribly and were in the hospital for weeks. Since development of the antivenom there has not been a single reported death from the bite of a Sydeny funnel web. Not one. You still suffer horribly—the funnel web's bite is extremely painful, and you'll still get fever and sweats and chills and nausea and pain and pain and pain—but you're only in the hospital for a couple days, rather than weeks and weeks.
Note: When Christine was a kid her grandfather died from a funnel web bite. She has a funny story about that. Honestly. Seems Grandpa was able to kill the spider—always helpful—and dear little Christine, about six at the time, was assigned the duty of holding said dead spider while they raced to the hospital. Once there, they were tending to grandpa and whatnot…when the "dead" funnel web spider…the most deadly spider in creation…started crawling across Christine's hand. But really, she should tell you the story…
The park, we found out from the very nice and very funny Ranger Mike, has about 600 venomous snakes - OH. MY. GOD. I am so going into the building - and they do regular venom milking on several of them of different species, as well as the venomous spider milking. They even have king cobras—the only zoo in Australia that has these snakes. And they breed them. And if we volunteer…maybe we can help milk them? Please?
Let's get to some pics. You'll be happy to hear that I actually didn't take very many. First, on the drive out, we stopped and listed to some bell birds. Just beautiful. (The also beautiful whining cries are from another type of bird which I'm not familiar with. I will let you know when I find out.)
I've always thought of copperheads as distinctly American snakes, but they are found in many parts of the world. Here's an Aussie version—very venomous (of course)—the very attractive lowland copperhead:
Here's a closer shot. If you click, then click again, you can get in very close to the cute bugger's face, and see the mites on its head. Mites are a big problem with captive (and wild) snakes.
Next up, a non-native animal, the Galapagos tortoise. I don't have much to say about it, but this beast does have an odd shell:
Now back to native Oz: wombats, the cutest little pig creatures you ever saw. I'll write more about them when we see them in the wild, which we will:
• My feelings about animals in captivity were very affected by this book: King Solomon's Ring. Lorenz believed that some, maybe many, animals are not adversely affected by captivity. And he speaks with more than a little authority. (On a personal note, I think it was my old friend Dave May who recommended that book to me. Along with A Confederacy of Dunces,A Canticle For Liebowitz, and many more. Thanks for that, Dave.)
