Koalas, Kangaroos and Crocs 3-25-09

It seems that Australia has some of the deadliest animals and insects in the world. So many in fact they keep lists of THE most deadliest and like to share them with their tourists to scare them to death! By the time we attended the lectures given on the ship by the "experts" in these creepy, crawly, scary, and intimidating creatures, we were scared to step foot onto the continent! They have snakes, 170 different kinds and most of them are poisonous. Not only are they poisonous but the most deadly ones will kill you before you can possibly get to help! They have snakes that will chase you, snakes that crawl into your car, snakes that lay still even if you jump up and down to create noise and strike you anyway! They have spiders that are even more deadly than some of the snakes! Some spiders have been known to cause car accidents because they like to crawl up into the driver's side sun-visor of your car. (Don't know why they prefer the driver's side) However, when an unsuspecting driver is driving along and has the sun come into their eyes and pulls down their sun-visor...YIKES...the spider drops down into their lap and the Aussie driving the car goes completely bonkers and ends up swerving off the road to their ultimate death! So the spider doesn't even have to bite you to cause a death!! They have Box Jelly-fish that are just plain deadly. No hope for you if you are stung by those guys. Also some smaller sneaky jelly fish that swarm and can be deadly if you are stung enough times!
We had to see for ourselves. Land only. We went to a wildlife park that allows you to hold,pet, cuddle the animals. We did not cuddle any snakes! Notice the top ten list of snakes...all Aussie's!!!!
Yes, the Koalas are the cutest living creatures on earth. So soft!!!!
The Dingos. They look like under-nurished dogs. Giant bats...they bite. Don't bite us! The kangaroos. Friendly and hungry guys. They hopped right up to you looking for a bite to eat and even ate the cone!!! Notice one photo that the momma kangaroo has her baby in her pouch and the baby is eating too! Very cute.
The crocs were kept at bay...that goodness. They were big monsters that we wanted nothing to do with.
Penguins. As if we have not had our fair share of those guys! These were appropriately named "small penguins".
Fun day. Glad we saw them and did not get bitten, stung, or clawed!!
However.....The Great Barrier Reef is waiting for us!! That will be Monday, March 30th. Stay tuned things could get exciting!!!!