Jottings from the Tropics: 2 July, 2013

I've been experiencing problems commenting on some blogs for a while now. I type in hilarious and informative comments (trust me, they're brilliant), but they disappear into the aether. (This is not the same as the situation where I type in hilarious and informative comments, but they are transformed into disappointingly dull ones after I press submit. That's an entirely different problem.) Anyway, I do read a lot of blogs, but my comments ain't going through. Sorry. I'm blaming Google.

— o O o —

The snake has gone. It wasn't a real snake, but a rubber one that I put on the roof of my car to scare away a white-browed scrubwren. I didn't want to scare it out of the garden — scrubwrens are cute little birds and fantastic insect-hunters — I just wanted to scare it away from my car.

One of the scrubwrens had taken to attacking its identical twin in the passenger wing mirror. The one in the driver's side mirror is fine, apparently. That one can stay as long as it likes. But the passenger side...well...the presence of the passenger side scrubwren is an affront to avian dignity.

Consequently, that car door is painted in streaks, whereas the back of the car is speckled with white blots. If this were on canvas, you might mistake it for a Jackson Poollock. (And I should be ashamed of that pun, but I'm not.) 

And now I'm wondering where the snake has gone. I suspect that somewhere, a kookaburra is getting battered in the face by a snake that not only won't die when it's smacked against a fence post, but also fights back.