Friends in My Computer

Writers are by nature solitary creatures. I sit at home in my office by myself and have no regrets about not being in an office full of people. But I do love being connected to my writing friends. Trouble is, they are scattered around the country. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology (and skype) I can see my friends and chat, brainstorm and sprint with them. My family are used to me talking to my computer.

Do you stay in touch with friends and family this way as well?

Source: Photobucket

Happy Father's Day

It's Father's Day in Australia today. I've been very blessed to have a wonderful, amazing father of my own. And the Barbarians are equally lucky to have The Hub for a father. They showed him how much they love him with coffee, toast and homemade cards and gifts in bed this morning. 

Attack of the Caterpillar

I'm not sure if I've talked about geocaching here before (I'll have to check my archives), but I should probably do another post on the subject anyway.

Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. It's buckets of fun and the whole family can be involved. For more info go here.

Last Saturday I was geocaching with a friend while taking my dog for a walk. We'd found the cache and my friend removed the camouflage. I signed the log, replaced the cache and put the camouflage back.

BUT I held the camouflage (a large piece of bark) differently to my friend. When replacing the camouflage I was injured. Looking more closely at the camouflage I discovered the cocoon of a white-stemmed gum moth (Chelepteryx collesi) which was covered in thousands of spine-like hairs - hundreds of which ended up in my fingers!

The Cocoon - see the nasty black spines

I've seen one of these caterpillars before (check out my blog post here). They are huge at about 12cm / 4.7inches long. The cocoon was at least that long, if not longer. So the spines covered 2 of my fingers.

According to CSIRO: The short spines [of the caterpillar] are not only sharp and brittle, meaning they will break off and lodge in your skin; they also carry a toxin that causes pain and, in rare cases, anaphylactic shock. Even the cocoon is nasty, since the caterpillar inside sheds the spines and forces them out through the tough silken walls, resulting in a well protected pincushion.

We dug out the first aid kit and attacked the spines with bandaids (using the sticky part to try and pull the spines out) as well as tweezers. Not much luck unfortunately. Those spines burnt!

The next morning, after trying all sorts of methods to get rid of the spines - stronger tape, different tweezers, sandpaper (ground them to skin level but didn't stop the burning), drawing ointment - I realised there was only one thing for it. I dug those suckers out with a needle.

My fingers look a mess, but with the spines gone so is the burning.

When has nature attacked you?