Backyard Bandicoot!

For the last couple of months we have been planting and designing our garden. We where leaving it a bit late with summer coming on and we have been really lucky that this Spring and December has been very wet. For the 12 months Haico has been working very hard, removing the cement driveway and creating plant boxes, an putting on a deck. We planted out garden in the hope of attracting some native birds instead of the Mynas and Spotted-turtle Doves- respectively the worst feral bird and one considered to have the potential to become as bad. Rainbow Lorikeets have enjoyed the grafted gum, but the small insectivorous birds haven't moved in. One morning in the first week of January Haico woke me up, distressed because something had been attacking our garden.

The Inner West Long-nosed Bandicoots!

NSW Environment speculates where they might have come from:

Long-nosed Bandicoots in inner western Sydney shelter mostly under older houses and buildings, and forage in parkland and back-yards (T. Leary pers. comm. August 2007; Australian Museum Business Services 2007; Leary et al. unpubl. data, ms submitted). The sub-adult and adult bandicoots presently living around the Dulwich Hill area may have dispersed from a source population occupying a larger area of remnant vegetation, such as Wolli Creek to the south. There are apparently no large blocks of suitable habitat, likely to support a large source population, on the Cooks River to the south, or along the southern foreshore of Parramatta River and Sydney Harbour to the north.

You can tell by the pointed cone shape of the scratching.

The Bandicoot stayed around for a few days and then went on his way- which is apparently their pattern. They like to hide under the house, forage for a few days then move on to the next old house with cracks in the foundations. It looks like the one that visited us lived under the new back deck.

They have arrived back though- not so much to our yard but to the nature strip out the front. National Parks have installed a motion-censor camera in our backyard to try and get some images. Fingers crossed it gets more than our legs going to the tap and compost bin.

house mate

He came into the house on the 42 degree day and since then, turns up in different spots. I don't mind when he is on the walls, but the thought that I might accidentally touch him while picking up a book is a little disturbing.

conversations with cats - through the sapphire sky

Check out this post over on through the sapphire sky about the cat painters of the Edo period:

Using cat paintings to rat proof - cat painters in Edo

lone cockatoo

like a Christmas tree angel on top of the Norfolk Island Pine tree next door

I think he might have been an avery-escapee as he was on his own- you usually see Sulfur-crested Cockatoos in flocks- or he might be from the gang that hang out just south of the Cooks River temporarily separated. He was getting harassed by the local Magpies and Noisy Minors.

"A conference of cats"

It's not been a good day

Not much progress has been made on the chapter that is almost finished and I am in terrible hormonal mood which is sinking into a blue funk as I face the reality that I probably wont be going to Japan or Europe this year.

Siting at my messy desk I notice a zine that has been living on the left hand side of my computer for some time now. It has a price sticker on it which makes me think that I bought in the flesh from Sticky (as opposed to online) on my way home from Nagoya which included a long stop in Melbourne. My desk is like that, things land there and stay there.

Anyway I was procrastinating so I read it for the first time- I often buy zines quickly on the feel and look of them.

Called "Raining in my room" it was a charming read. I realise now that I shared a table with the writer Emma at the Wollongong zine fair couple of years ago. She is one half of Take Care distro. (Flaps doesn't currently stocks with them) (if your interested in zines it's worth checking out her blog, scroll down for distro information and some posts from her about zine making, also good list of links)

Its a zine about suburbia and memory, and the last section is about the stray cats that hang out in the closed off road at the end of Shirlow St, Marrickville - it turns out that they are many peoples secret pleasure.

Emma I hope you don't mind me posting part of your zine here:

My favourite line: "The streets are dark and catless."

now I can move this zine to the pile on the bookshelf..