Fuck me ...

[blamebrampton]

People often ask 'why do you stay in Australia when all of the fauna and some of the flora is lethal?'* This is the wrong question.

The right question is: 'What the hell are you thinking staying in a country that has new fire danger warnings like this??!!'


ETA: And just in case there is any suspicion of this being another example of my love for hyperbole, I give you the news page the image came from. Alas, I've not found a copy of the TV advert explaining the Catastrophic level on YouTube yet, but it is along the lines of 'RUN! RUN! RUN AND DO NOT LOOK BACK!' Which I have to say is wholly reasonable under the circumstances.


* This is not strictly true. The sheep, as Terry Pratchett accurately observed, are quite safe. Most wallabies, kangaroos and koalas are perfectly harmless. Many of the birds are actually pleasant! But steer well clear of the cute little octopuses.

Comments

[ladyjaneva.livejournal.com]

wow! Sometimes I'm real glad I live in an area where the biggest catastrophes one can imagine are storms that take down trees. Actually my state (Brandenburg) is the one with the highest danger of fire warnings, but human life has never been threatened by them.

What do octupuses do? Don't some people eat them?

[brissygirl.livejournal.com]

The octopus brammers is refering to is a blue ring octopus. If you touch it you can end up paralysed from the poison that's if it doesn't kill you. They are tiny and have pretty blue rings all over their body to attract they prey I think, and of course idiotic humans who don't know better.

[ladyjaneva.livejournal.com]

OMG it looks so cute! And they're so tiny! And pretty! And so deadly!

"Tetrodotoxin poisoning can result in the victim being fully aware of his surroundings but unable to breathe. Because of the paralysis that occurs they have no way of signalling for help or any way of indicating distress."
That scared the shit out of me.


Umm, where I live, we have some spiders whose bites are a bit painful. And, um, lots of dog shit.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Brissy's right. They sit around in shallow rockpools looking sweet, waving little tentacles, waiting until you get close enough and then taking you down ;-)

[ladyjaneva.livejournal.com]

I looked up on pictures, and I can hardly wrap my mind around such a small and pretty creature being so deadly...

And the venom: "victim being fully aware of his surroundings but unable to breathe" -> stuff of nightmares!