D is for Dangerous Daggy Hat

Here's me hat except that in the breeze I wear it wedged down and use the chin strap - rather ordinary looking huh?

Some of the first things overseas visitors want to see here in Oz are the weird animals and let's face it we have quite a few. And you could take your visitors on the road to spy Kangas and snakes and emus and stuff, but if that's the kind of adventure they want, The Big House isn't the jumping off point for them. We take our visitors to Currumbin Bird Sanctuary.

In my youth it was just a circle paddock where people stood around holding honey sloppy bread and let birds come and sit and shit all over 'em. It was quite the spectacle and I bloody hated every minute. If it wasn't the parakeets shitting in your hair, it was a scrub turkey wedging it's self firmly in your face. It's possible that this place is single handedly responsible for my fear of birds today.

But the Bird park has been well and truly expanded and is the gentle home to lots of Aussie wildlife and so it's where we go except not at bird feeding time, cos that is still yukky.

We took our Pom and my lovely there yesterday.

We visited the Koalas and the Kangaroos and old man Emu and more bloody lizards than enough, which just roam fee everywhere...perhaps a cage might be useful to save scaring old women? Think I'll put that in a suggestion box except that Bell would go mad.

But the big attraction since the last time I was there is the crocodile feeding so we made sure we were positioned well to see those enormous chompers. The big fella was 4 and a half metres long and more than half a metre across. Pre-historic and completely terrifying.

We were standing waiting for the feeding to begin when I was approached by a blonde, pretty if she smiled American woman. She turned out to be more hostile than the croc.

'Can you take off you hat so the people behind can see?'
'I am wearing it so I don't get sunburned?' ( Clearly it is not a fashion forward piece of kit.)
'Maybe you should consider using sunscreen then.' delivered in an angry retort. Wild guessing tells me she is not used to hearing NO.
'Maybe you should mind your own business.'

It was all very unpleasant.

I should point out that:
The hat sits firmly onto the top of my head and I am shortish so it makes me not even as tall as the average woman so I have blessedly discovered via Facebook this week.
The 'people behind' were on a raised platform more than a metre above me.
I was wearing the hat cos the poison I am taking means that sunscreen is not possible and sun burn is chronic and painful and best avoided.

Where ever we found ourselves after this, there she was was, looking crabby and constipated and maybe that was her problem?

I don't mind that she asked me to take the hat off, but I do mind that when I said no she got all shitty. I was about to explain why, then thought better of it. It wasn't her business.

The Koalas were bloody marvelous - as active as I have ever seen them - all climbing and crawling to mum, and chomping up food and sliding down to the ground for a waddle and and a wee.

And I think Tom enjoyed the weirdness of it all.


Have you been struck silent by rudeness this week?