The Exotic and the Backwards

Monday Sept. 24 7:02 am

Yesterday I was lamenting to myself that this place was not exotic enough considering how damned far away it is; yesterday things took a turn for the exotic. We started out the morning on the beach. (I talked about this yesterday and with the single bird eating a fish.) We had a beautiful walk along Bondi Beach and we noticed some odd things there on the ground. (Pictured here to the right.) I did not mention it yesterday because I was completely unaware of its significance. We noticed these blue things all over the sand. They were like inflated tiny balloons. We figured they were some kind of seaweed. Charlie was about to touch one, when I shouted at him “oh my god don’t touch it, it might be some kind of irritant!” Honest to God, I did not have any idea what this little thing was, but thank god I spoke when I did and also that Char took my advice. The damned things turned out to be Portuguese man-o-wars. I have read about these little nasties but I have never seen one. Apparently, people show up all the time in Sydney hospitals with stings and allergic reactions that shut their breathing down. We at least had the presence of mind to take a few pictures of the things. Turns out, even after they are dead, their stingers are in perfect working order for about two days.

On a more pleasant note, we went out to Meagan’s house in the afternoon and the three of us spent the afternoon at a place called the Koala Park. It is a very tiny zoo with only Australian animals and you get to pet most of them. So I had the totally cool experience of being able to pet a Koala and about 5 different kinds of kangaroos. And we had we had some very funny conversations with some tropical birds who said all kinds of things, and it was so weird because they say that parrots do not really understand what they are saying, but this one bird said to us as soon as we walked up to his cage, “do you have a cookie?” When we didn’t produce a cookie he said “bye bye.” Charlie kept talking to him and he came back over to us and he flipped up his head feathers and whistled at Charlie. It was really funny. We saw some odd porcupine-looking animals I had never heard of called echidnas. The totally strange thing about these little fellows is that their hind legs are on backwards! The claws on their hind legs actually face their tail! Also, for the first time ever, I got to see a peacock with his feathers fully extended. This did absolutely nothing to attract the attention of the female peacock, but you should have the seen the female humans in the park shouting and hollering for him when those feathers went up. Human males, take note.

We ended the day by going down to see the opera house by night. It was breathtaking. Under the opera house, along the water there is a bar with live music—all outside. It was totally packed with people. We ordered wine and beer and three of us sat and talked and caught up on all the family gossip. Turns out, Meagan has a boyfriend! We get to meet this guy later this week. No worries, all of Charlie’s shotguns are safely back in the US.