Following my recent blog “How to Weld”, on the realities of welding when you’ve never been taught, haven’t got a clue and have dodgy equipment, I thought I’d offer a few insights into metal lathe-work.

First thing to note is that a metal lathe is finely engineered, geared movement of the tool for smooth cutting, with many automatic features for thread cutting etc, has a tool-post graduated to fractions of a millimetre, is substantially built to close tolerances, and is expensive with an average lathe costing thousands.  A wood lathe on the other hand just rotates the wood and has a tool-rest where the tool is hand held and controlled.  Its greatest virtue is that it is cheap.  I got my wood lathe from a second-hand store for $50 I think.  No mount and no motor.  From another second-hand shop I got an old washing-machine motor for $20 and I built a substantial trestle of wood to mount the lathe.  The main tool used for the mount was a chain-saw and I rather like that rough-hewn look.

One of the great (and scary) features of a wood lathe, is that it has a built-in instruction manual.  Not that it has detailed procedures engraved on it, no of course not.  It’s just that if you do anything wrong, it throws the tool or the wood at you , and sometimes both.  After you have sought medical attention and repaired the equipment, it is unlikely you will repeat that mistake.  Instead you will find another mistake until you exhaust your repertoire of blunders, and your medical supplies.  Pain aversion therapy really focuses the mind.

Turning metal on a wood lathe has added challenges, and should only be attempted if you have personal protection wear obtained from the bomb squad.  Having got that disclaimer out of the way, of course I didn’t.  I just blundered in wearing singlet and thongs.  For any reader in the northern hemisphere, thongs are rudimentary footwear. Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.

First of all, put away any wood cutting tools.  You won’t have streams of shavings streaming over your shoulder, you’ll have mangled metal, blood and bone in under half a second.  The only tools to use are scrapers, drills, grinders, abrasives and hacksaws.  If you are turning steel or harder materials, don’t use scrapers.  For brass, aluminium etc, scrapers will work fine, but need frequent sharpening.  My scrapers are made from old worn out files.

In the picture above, the pulley wheel was refurbished after about 5 years of service, as the ‘v’ grooves wear to ‘u’ grooves and lose grip.  The angle grinder was steadied on the tool-post and a little cut-out of plywood used to check the angle.  The pulley is good for a few more years now.

The nozzles were turned from a 3 inch diameter bar of brass with drill mounted in the tail-stock and scrapers, and I have a few different sizes to allow for seasonal flow rates in the creek.

The slip rings assembly has been refurbished after rings 1 and 4 burnt out when they started sparking, which quickly erodes the rings.  I found I had some spare metal on the end of some nozzles, so cut them off to 9mm thick with a hacksaw on the lathe.  It is quite easy to part them off with an accurate thickness.  I then bored the holes out with a scraper until I got an interference fit.  That means tight, but can bang them on with a hammer.  A bit of superglue for good luck and whack it together.  The slip rings currently on the generator have been going about 7 years and were made from scratch.  1 inch shaft (yes, ancient machine and ancient units), so I started with 1 inch poly pipe for insulation.  The rings were turned from the 3 inch brass bar and the insulation between them was rings of laminex I had come by when my mother upgraded her shower.  Some internal wiring and bolts for terminals were all clamped together with construction glue.

I think I have explored every possible way of having the brushes sparking in the 30 plus years it has been in continuous operation. The brushes wear out, the springs pushing them onto the rings rust away or break, the rear bearing is worn and though no discernible vibration can be seen or felt but causes the brushes to bounce and spark.  The last problem following its most recent dumping in the creek during a cyclone, was hard to diagnose.  30 years and 24,440,400,000 rotations later, had caused the rotor to have about 4mm of end-play.  That is the rotor could flop back and forth and move the rings off the brushes.  I used a couple of old piston rings to take up the slack.

If you ever need a generator to do hard and continuous service, do yourself a favour and get a brushless one.

In case you didn’t know, I like bodging.  Fixing things with whatever is at hand, reusing discarded resources and not consuming future supplies.  It is easy to fix things with a cheque book.  Open your wallet and get an expert.  It is satisfying to use tools and junk to get what you need.  It is empowering to acquire skills and become less dependant on the ‘system’.  Not to mention hugely cheaper.  In my travels in Africa, I can assure you the craft of ‘bodging’ is alive and well with many clever and skilful practitioners.  Alas, the people of the more developed countries have become more and more dependant on other people to fix a problem.  Avagoyamug!

The weather down on the fungus farm is foul.  Strong winds driving the drizzle in horizontal sheets and the temp peaking out today at 14C.  The clouds are clamped on to the hills so I can barely see the next ridge.  The grass isn’t growing but the fungus is, with patches of toadstools appearing on the ground.  This is allegedly the ‘Dry’ season.  I have yet to be convinced.  The one consolation I have is a hot shower.

Not just any hot shower.  The most luxurious, satisfying, steaming, endless hot shower that anyone has ever enjoyed.  I will have to justify that remark.  It is luxurious the in ample water it provides at any temperature from icy  cold to stingingly hot (thermostat set at 70C).  I have it steaming at the moment to counter the chill weather.  It is endless in that I am the sole user of a 200L tank.  That is a long, long shower.  The satisfying bit takes a bit more explaining.

I have with my own labour provided every input to this most enjoyable experience.  I built the house which contains it, and the walls which enclose the shower.  Much later on the in-laws from England tiled it for me.  They are dead now, but their work still finds a use, as they would want.  I designed and built the water system that provides the water for the shower.  Pumped from the creek by a ram pump which uses the water itself to lift the water to a tank on the hill.  I designed and built the hydro power system which dumps the unused electrical power into the hot water system to give me the free steaming hot water.  I designed and built the drainage system which takes the water from the shower to a drainage trench which after  six months or a year, seeps the ground-filtered water back to the creek it came from.  Each shower I take reminds me of the laborious achievements in the past.  If this sounds like self-congratulation ….. well it is.  We should all look back sometimes and reward ourselves by recognising where hard work and stamina have brought us.

My example was a shower.  Far more important is the long and consistent effort parents put into raising kids.  Step by step, putting things in place to achieve financial security, to build a loving home, to share the time for fun, stories and experiences that will help the kids grow.  The hard yards are now, out in the muddy paddock.  The hot shower comes later.

I feel sorry for Vladimir.  He is copping a lot of flak (anti-aircraft defence) over MH17.  I might offer him a gift voucher for Possum Valley.  I think he could use a little time out.

The last thing Putin wanted was for some ill-trained cowboy, ego-tripping on the new toy he had been given, to shoot down a civilian aircraft.  In his sharp, cold, calculating mind, he can see the PR disaster of 100 children and droves of Dutch people whose worst international crime in recent years has been the appallingly bland gouda cheese.  I dare say that he has already identified the culprits, I mean how many of these expensive missile toys has he given out?  I don’t think the western press will ever be satisfied with the perpetrators being brought to trial.  But it wouldn’t surprise me if they are are already totally naked, hanging by the thumbs and being treated to some electro convulsive therapy in a Moscow dungeon.  This will sharpen their minds and assist in their education, if they survive.

I think I can detect Putin’s fingerprints on the assertion that there were Ukrainian fighter jets just buzzing round the downed airliner.  Typical KGB obfuscation.  If it can’t be disproved, muddy the waters.  In the US this is called ‘plausible deniability”.

Please forgive this harsh cold analysis.  I did shed some tears as you did when shown the pictures of children who would never have the opportunity to live a full life and realise their potential.   Now in grandparent mode, I could make an easy decision to trade my limited remaining life for their bright future.

To bring this to a conclusion, Putin did instigate this covert invasion.  He doesn’t care about ‘collateral damage’.  He does care about foreign perceptions which might cause his allies to back away.  He is now in damage control.  Expect nothing from the air investigation except it was hit by a missile.

The weather is perfect today 10-20C  and sparkling blue sky.  A perfect winters day.  The rainforest residents like it too and are most active.  A little while ago there was a little white-browed scrub wren in the house and it perched on my hand for a while before flying out.  The platypus have been active, the possums cheeky, and the wallabies hopping.  The social life of the animals perks up noticeably in the fine weather.  If you don’t know birds and animals have a social life, you haven’t been paying attention.  I have seen love affairs, tender child rearing, home building, hideous fights, fornication in my lounge room, gang turf wars, bullying, gender identity issues, inter-species cooperation and wars and all manner of behaviour you would find in …… well …. your average soap opera.  I am in no doubt that birds and animals feel the same emotions as us and at a similar intensity.  Far from being perfectly adapted to their environment and knowing precisely what to do, they make blunders and have much to learn.

As an example of complex behaviour I hadn’t guessed at, one day I was attracted by a huge racket from birds up the hill.  It turned out to be a flock of about 70 currawongs and about the same number of crimson rosellas and they were having a scrap.  One lot in one tree and the other lot in another screaming abuse at each other (my interpretation).  Every now and then 5-10 birds would fly out of their tree to a tird tree about in the middle,  Soon after they would be matched by the same number from the rival gang.  I couldn’t see much of what went on, but there was much noise and they were being cheered on by the partisan spectators.  Then suddenly they would all return to the gang headquarters.  Several times this cycle repeated and always the birds second to fly into the tree matched the number of the challenging champions.  I gathered that there were rules to this stoush, and that they could count at least as well as I could in the melee.  After about half an hour I left them to it.  I had no idea before that bird behaviour could be so determined and complex.

Many of my recent guest have seen tree kangaroos, some by diligent and patient observation, but most by chance.  Two sightings right next to Maple Cottage.  Several others near the sauna.

Just a couple of hours ago I was showing newly arrived guest around and discovered one was a herpetologist.  What brilliant timing!  How often have you thought “there is never a herpetologist around when you need one”?  You see my froggy mate Cedric, referred to and pictured in a previous blog ‘Indoor Zoo’, had reappeared in the kitchen after a two week absence.  We had been shower buddies for some time and I missed him.  He jumped out of the cutlery holder as I was doing the washing-up.  He was very lucky I didn’t stab him with a knife.  I hadn’t been able to identify him despite being given a book by the authors of “Rainforest Frogs of the Wet Tropics” who came to Possum Valley.  You see I am overrun by herpetologists.  Not being one to miss an opportunity, I press-ganged this scholar and gentleman into coming to identify and photograph my little friend after just an hour after arriving at what he thought might be a relaxing weekend.  He came to a definite conclusion.  He didn’t know what it was.  He explained that the appearance of frogs varied widely.  Not only that, they could change appearance to suit the environment not by evolutionary drift, but in weeks like a slow-motion chameleon.  And it was only possible to tell sex (in a non-destructive way), when they were mating when it was presumed the male was on top.  We know how stereotypes can be misleading.  I have seen pictures of a three-high stack of frogs, which puts doubt on even that methodology.  He will e-mail of his very detailed pics of Cedric to a high-ranking chief in the clan of herpetologists in the hope of receiving a pronouncement.  Stay tuned to this channel for more nail-biting updates.

For the third time today nearly tripped over a black snake.  As usual, it took off like I was poisonous or something.  I really can’t understand their morbid fear of humans.  Can’t we all get along together?

If you are looking for tips on the finer points of welding high-carbon steel, or the correct amperage for 5mm aluminium butt joint, then just click through as you have been dragged here my some mindless search engine and are being led astray.  No, this is an account of a total plonker who always thought welding would be a good idea but never got round to it until later in life.  More of a story of how not to do welding.

Very important is choice of welder to suit your needs.  Careful research is required as there is a surprisingly diverse range of capacities and applications.  Is gas shielding required? Is aluminium fabrication essential?  Of course price has to be factored in the equation and an analysis of probable frequency of use of high-end capacity must be closely scrutinised.   What I did…… Got a rush of blood to the head in the hardware store when a shiny yellow box was on sale.  It came with face shield, small bag of rods, and a CD on how to weld.  I should have guessed this was not quality gear when I saw the plastic rod clamp.  Arc temps are several thousands of degrees, melting point of plastics are at best a couple of hundred degrees.  Even the less technically minded of my dear readers can probably guess the outcome of this mismatch.  Yes, the rod holder melts to a blob.  I also found that the shiny yellow paint did nothing to aid welding.

The second most important requirement to get into the field of welding is to get expert tuition from experienced welders in a controlled environment of graduated steps to build up one’s skills.  What I did……. found there were no TAFE courses, only bookkeeping and macramé seemed to be on offer.  So I resorted to the bundled CD.  It had been translated from Japanese via Mandarin, or perhaps the other way round, and visually showed multiple scenes of blinding light.   From it I garnered only one useful pointer, look at the pool, not the arc.  It would take some time before I realised the CD actually did have 5 seconds of usefulness.

Thirdly is the preparation of a safe work place to practice this new skill, paying particular attention to eye safety, fire safety, avoidance of burns and protection from the intense UV given off by the arc.  What I did…… set up in my woodwork shop where the floor has not been seen for a decade because of accumulated wood shavings, the benches are all wood, and combustible material crowds every corner.  Here is a tip I learned early on and pass on to you; don’t weld in gum boots.  Red-hot slag drops from the job and into them leaving you hopping round the workshop like a bunny on steroids.  Keep a bucket of water on hand to put out the subsidiary fires.  I also discovered the UV is not the way to get a tan.  All of the red and none of the brown.

Now we come to the nitty-gritty bits about actual welding, ‘striking the arc’.  All you have to do is make an electrical contact between the rod and the job to melt the materials to be welded and add the material in the rod to make a perfect fusion as though it had been one piece in the first place.  What I did…… Got all the gear ready grabbed the mask and found I couldn’t see anything.  This has got to be a mistake! How can I weld if I can’t see the job?  I sort of peeped round the edge of mask and blinded my self several times.  I reasoned that if I ever did manage to make an arc, I would then be able to see.  Then followed a long session of making a tiny flash, not enough to see by, followed by an angry buzz from the welder as I have stuck the rod to the job, accompanied by an even louder and angrier buzz from me cursing into the mask as I wrench the rod back and forth to get it unstuck.  Then I had a long, slow cup of tea.  Then another longer, louder session as described above, but with the same results.  Next day I was in a calmer mood and armed with a steely determination.  Get the rod close to the job without the mask, but not so close I give myself a flash.  Freeze the hand, move the head behind the mask and give a little scratch and pull back about 5mm.   Yipee! An arc! The try and keep the arc constant as the rod melts away.  I was glowing with pride after I burnt my first 5cm of rod.  I was also glowing with arc-burn from the previous day.  None of the above was trying to actually join 2 bits of steel, I was just trying to lay some blobs on a flat plate.  I thought I would rest on my laurels for the day, before things took a turn for the worse.

My first job was to build a sauna stove out of a flat sheet of 5 mm steel 4 ft by 6 ft.  A bit ambitious for a first job I will conceded.  I soon found that my toy welder that boasts 100 amps (and it probably is just a boast) just doesn’t have the balls to weld the corner of an ‘L’ joint.  Even cranked up to max, it simple hasn’t the heat to melt both bits of steel as the thick metal easily conducts the heat away.  No melt, no weld.  Bugger!  After a lot of experiment, I found I could just get a weld if I just touched the inside corners of the material in the ‘L’, rather than lapping one plate over the other.  That way I could attack the exposed corners of the steel.   Much later I proudly told an experienced welder of my ground-breaking discovery and he gave me a scathing look and said “That’s the way you are supposed to do it”.  He nobly restrained himself from adding “you numbskull”.

Step by painful step, I overcame the difficulties of immense ignorance and super-cheap equipment.  I still have problems with thick metal and bubblegum welds, slag inclusions and setting the workshop of fire, but hey! I get the job done.  I have some triumphs such as welding pipes that have to withstand very high pressure pulses without leaking (on the ram pump) and the sauna stove now looks as though it will rust away before it collapses into its component parts.  I now enjoy welding but have no plans to up-grade my gear as I would then probably run into difficulties with the stand-alone power system I rely on here.  I much prefer the little welder chucking in the towel with thermal overload after 10 rods, rather than the power system crashing.  I also get an enforced smoko as the little device sulks for an hour.  But if you are thinking of leaning to weld, now you know how not to do it.  And you can get welding glass that are like some sunglasses that go instantly dark in strong light.  I think that would make life a lot easier.  Then again it might amuse you to ‘discover’ welding by a process of exhausting every possible unworkable technique.

 

From my autonomous command post in the forest wilderness of North Queensland, I keep tabs on the rest of the world while resisting being sucked into its machinery.  After great deliberation and soul-searching, the only conclusion I can come to is that the rest of the world is stark-staring barking mad.  The only slight concern I have about this conclusion is that I seem to be outnumbered 7 billion to 1.  This leads to a niggling doubt, but I shrug it off as one must have confidence in one’s opinions after all.

Don’t think for a moment dear reader that I consider each and every person totally demented, far from it, but the systems of toil and reward, saving and investment, seem so far from a rational or equitable system that I wonder how long you will tolerate it.  The idea of fair reward for toil has totally broken down, to be replaced by reward depending on how close your snout is to the money trough.  Since the GFC in the US 14 trillion dollars was created from nothing by the Fed.  The cartel of banks answerable to nobody.  So the loss of value of the dollar in the pocket was existing money minus $14,000,000,000,000.   After all they didn’t create and goods or anything real, just money.  So who got this tidy sum? Initially the banks, then they bought government debt to keep it solvent, and then to corporations where it flowed onto Wall Street.  Does this strike you as a bit incestuous?  You bet.  Those inside the system with noses to the trough are sucking us dry.  This explains why 20-25% of the GDP of the US and UK is in financial services.  The new Mafia taking a cut on every deal.  If you take a rational look at an efficient system to transact and account for financial  deals, perhaps a 5% surcharge would be in order.  And so it was in the England of Dickens with a starched collar clerk at a high desk.  Now despite the enormous advantages of computerised systems, the financial sector is apparently 5 times less efficient than their quill scratching forebears?  Or is it 5 times more bloated because they can?

No, in fact they are far more efficient than at any time in the past.  The financial sector has just massively expanded its range of products by wrapping up debt and marketing it as an asset.  The madness really starts with the ‘derivatives’.   I promise to pay Joe $100.  Joe can’t pay his debts so he sells my debt to Sue.  Sue has bought a lot of debts at a bargain price,  so auctions them off at a discount.  And so it goes on until you get ‘derivatives’ where the original source has been just about forgotten, and somewhere along the line, the debts have been re-branded as assets.  The derivatives market had reached about US$650 trillion!  the last I heard.  Something like a decades worth of the entire world’s economic output.  And the financial world makes a fortune trading this shit!  The whole lot of these useless parasites have never between them made anything as useful as a box of matches!

If I sound a tad strident, a little miffed, perhaps a bit out of sorts, then I am not quite getting my point across.  I am absolutely livid that the greatest larceny in in the history of the world is going on, transferring the world’s assets and wealth from the people who create it to the 1% obscenely rich and we let it continue!  One of the smartest purchases that the uber-rich have made in the last few decades has been governments.  That has paid off handsomely.  Now all politicians can gibber on about is GDP, promoting industry, the bottom line, and money, money and money.  I would now like to point out that a society is composed of people, people and people.

I am fortunate to live in a wealthy country where the basic needs are easily met.  If you don’t agree, then we have a different definition of ‘basic’.  I have been to places like Africa to receive lessons on ‘basic’, and how happy you can be if you pass that threshold.  In Australia, we can so easily deliver ‘basic’ to everyone and still have a huge surplus to play with to develop ourselves, our relationships and our society.  I make the case that we don’t need more money, we need more time, more good relationships, more contact with the environment, more time to play with our kids.

Perhaps I am not outnumbered by 7 billion to one.  There may be a few out there who feel they don’t actually need more money.  Who see the pursuit of wealth beyond basic needs as folly.  I’m feeling a bit lonely and I’d like to hear from you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy winter solstice, the shortest day of the year today.  And what a ripper!  After 40 days of almost continuous cloud and rain the sun has finally come out for the last couple of days.  Above is the view from my veranda a few minutes ago.  Just 2 days of sun has dried up the surface from squelching underfoot to a pleasant stroll on the grass.  Just a few days ago a friend drove onto the grass you can see in his 4WD and very nearly got bogged.  Not by sinking to the axles, just sitting on top with the wheels going round.  Down in the valley it was even wetter and my ducks were nearly getting bogged.  Having been raised parent-less from little fluffy yellow balls in my bath tub, they don’t know that ducks can fly.  I feel guilty as a de facto parent for not helping them fulfil their full potential, but I could hardly demonstrate for them apart from madly running around waving my arms.  I doubt even that would have done the trick without the vital clue of me taking to the air.

Me, and just about everybody else in FNQ would have had a whinge or two about the prolonged end to the wet.  But I think we are all aware in this sun-baked arid country that rain is a blessing.  It is just that when we count our blessings, we are over-endowed.  On a global scale, the scarcity of fresh water is quickly becoming an acute issue.  In India, West US, China, huge parts of Africa, the middle east etc, the situation is acute and deterioration as they plunder the ground waters which will not replenish for thousands of years.  In the richer countries it leads to regional economic failure, in the poorer countries, to threatening the lives of millions and the stability of nations.

Here down on the fungus farm, I have been inconvenienced by not being able to do such things as mow the grass and deterred from other outside jobs, but the rain will have built up the ground water to keep the creek flowing well into the dry season.  That means I will not be troubled by lack of power from the hydro system for the foreseeable future.  Beautiful clean fresh water is tumbling down the waterfalls.  I sponsor some girls in Africa who have to walk kilometres to carry back water of dubious quality for everyday use.

An update on the “Indoor Zoo” post is that there was still a melomy remaining in Maple Cottage after I removed the one pictured in the post.  I had a reliable report that one was still there by a guest who was molested by one while in bed.  After dancing on her luggage, it ran over her head.  Fortunately I had advised her of its presence and she was not of a delicate disposition.  Non-the-less she advised me, or perhaps insisted, that I should redouble my efforts to evict it.  I did so setting the same bin trap that worked before and baited it with chocolate.  Total failure, as it took the bait and escaped.  It was obviously more athletic than its mate, being able to leap about 20 times its body length into the air.  The next day new guests arrived and I explained why there was a large dustbin in the kitchen with a few bits of chocolate at the bottom.  I must say they entered into the spirit of things and not only bagged (binned) the marauding melomy, but took it upon themselves to drive it to the same patch of forest where I had released its mate.  We can fondly imagine them reunited in nuptial bliss.

A friend and IT geek (sorry Martin), has downloaded a plug-in so that you can receive a notification of a new post if you wish.  You have to opt in by sending me an e-mail for me to add to subscribers.  Same method to unsubscribe.   I can’t imagine why you would subscribe unless you have a taste for the totally trivial.  Or perhaps you have been here, and seek a momentary escape to tales of nature’s bounty.

 

 

 

Between my house and the two cottages, I’ve been having plenty of wildlife encounters indoors, including the melomy above.  If you have never heard of a melomy, you have a lot of company as they are only found in the northern tropical highland rainforest.  The adult is half way in size between a mouse and a rat, but not closely related to either and the similar design is a good example of convergent evolution.  I caught it this morning in the bin that it is pictured in.  There have been melomys living in Maple Cottage for some time and I’ve been trying to get them with a huge range of traps, some I have tailor made to their size.  As they are a native species, it is of course illegal to use a fatal trap or poison.  I have caught a couple in an ingenious tube-like trap, but they got the hang of them really quickly and they were thereafter useless.  They consider the traps feeding stations and nimbly escape with the bait.  They do however climb into empty bins they can’t get out of like this one.  I think this is the last one to be evicted.  I took him/her down to show a guest at the other cottage and as he was leaving, he volunteered to drive it a few kms to release well away.  If they are released a few hundred meters away, they just come back again.  Unfortunately, two blokes couldn’t manage to outwit a lone melomy, and it escaped drawing blood on its way.  Score melomy 1, humans 0.

I have been sharing my shower with a small ragged edged dark green frog.  He is quiet and agreeable company and seems to be growing, so must be taking some toll on spiders and such.  He is welcome.  I have been given a tropical rainforest on the frogs here kindly given to me by the authors, a couple of profs from JCU.  Unfortunately, I can’t find it in the book so can’t give you a name except I call him Cedric.  Had a month of rain every day except 2 and you can tell how wet it is when a frog takes shelter.

Another recent resident is a small black snake less than a meter long.  It turned up in the cupboard where all the electrical/electronic gear is housed.  Heaps of devices in continuous use that give out steady warmth is attractive to many animals.  At least I kept the small furry ones away.  I kept forgetting it was there and nearly poked it a couple of times, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have bitten me as I’ve stood on them several times (accidentally) without them having a go at me.  After a couple of weeks, the snake abandoned the electrics and took up residence in the roof and some time later I saw part of him hanging down over the electric room heater where I dump the excess power from the hydro.  Heading for the heat again I thought.  A day later it was still there and I discovered it was dead.  I removed it with my snake tool just in case it was faking.  I’ve had a rather emaciated snake catch me like that before.

The possum raiding the kitchen most nights is almost one of the family and we tolerate each other pretty well.  We both know what to expect in the behaviour of the other.  Bit like being married.  To get rid of her I move closer as she watches, but don’t block the escape routes.  When I see her looking from me to the exit I quietly say “bugger off” and she scarpers along the route I have chosen and left open.

A couple of days ago I heard a bird banging off the windows in the lounge and was surprised to see it was a Lewin’s Honeyeater.  I was surprised because they usually don’t have any problem with windows and are a daily visitor especially in wet weather.  I’m just guessing, but I don’t think they like flying in the rain.  Also it was making quiet mewing sounds I have never heard from one before.  I am very familiar with its chirping song, and its ear-blasting trill, and much in between, but had never heard this sound before.  Then another Lewin’s flew across the room and attacked it showering feathers everywhere.  I couldn’t keep up with the pair flying round, banging into the windows and trilling loudly.  Finally the poor victim came to rest and flattened itself on the windowsill with its wings out-stretched in an arc mewing in submission.  The other leaped upon it ripping out more feathers.  I heroically leapt to the rescue and chased off the aggressor.  I slid open the window in front of the pathetic victim to release it from its peril and cool wet air came blasting through the window, but it didn’t fly off.  I poked with a finger in the bum and still it stubbornly sat there until further coaxing made it fly off.  It was only much later that it occurred to me that I had probably prevented the pair having a good shag.