Australia's friendly insects

Sunny, 35°C

Today was insect day. It was too hot to convince anyone to do anything so we hung out around home, skyped a few people and got going on some blogging. In the middle of typing I felt something crawl up my leg at the table this afternoon. It turned out to be a white tailed spider, which apparently isn't a good thing, but I just coaxed it off my leg and released it outside. Apparently their bites can be rather nasty. By the pictures it looked to be a male so it was naturally a bit less temperamental ;-).

Then I was talking with the people who own the place while I was BBQing supper and mentioned that I have been cautious when turning on the tank due to redback spiders. No sooner had they left and I went to turn the tank off and came face to face with the dreaded beasty who had come out of a dark corner when it got a bit heated up. I got a couple of photos which you can see. Ruth wasn't even interested in taking a close look at it. To top it all off, I just get back in from cooking supper and I feel something crawling across my belly. It takes offense to my trying to squish it against my rock hard abs and decides to sting me multiple times. The tough little bugger turns out to be a type of jumping ant we were warned about that jumps up and can sting you in a trail and are hard to kill. The venom hurt pretty good for a bit, then was swollen for bit but now it seems to have settled down into a red spot. Hopefully Aiden doesn't get into a hill of those critters. There is another ant here called a bull ant which is about the size of a carpenter ant back home and locals say it stings too and if you stomp on it, be prepared for it to start to pack you away. Australia is a fairly hostile place in some respects, but the people are pretty nice.
The crumpled remains of the not so jumpy little ant after repeated attempts to terminate the little bugger.