I don’t like blogging.

However, I do post between 2000 and 3000 words per week.  I just don’t post them here.

This is a place for the once-in-a-while observation or slightly amusing piece.  I have other sites for the heavy-duty writing posts.  Unfortunately, those sites are closed to all but members of Holly Lisle’s Writers’ Bootcamps.

See, I’m posting about my journey through her courses.  Her courses are copyrighted.  I don’t break copyright.

Eventually, maybe, life will smooth out so that I can get back here with items about Texas history and water.  (Yeah, water.  Try doing without it, see if you still thinks it’s a funny topic for a blog.)

For now, this place–this place provides me with free email.

Can you imagine being so bummed that you'd jump off this?

This boat and the people in it give an idea of the scale of the river.

Hoo!

Like most kids, I dreamed of becoming an Australian bush pilot when I grew up, if I didn’t become an Alaskan bush pilot or a pirate.  Books for children talk about Ayers Rock, dodo birds, the history as a penal colony, and duckbill platypuses.

Books for children leave out a lot of important data.  Like the following:

Poisonous snakes—we have those here, too.  The rattlesnake and the copperhead on land and the water moccasin in some of the lakes and rivers.  As a percentage of the snake population, the poisonous ones don’t amount to much.  Point goes to Australia.

Poisonous lizards—well, there’s only one of those here, the Gila Monster, which is beautiful, but not something to play with.  Australia has at least two, and wins this category.

Poisonous plants—yes, we have oleander, too.  We also have poke sallet, which is a good plant for eating if you know the secret handshake.  Otherwise, toes to the sky, boys!  We’re about tied in this category of scary things.

After that, Australia leaves Texas and the rest of the US in the dust, scary animal-wise.

Poison frogs?  Australia has them.  We don’t.  In fact, we have frogs that are good to eat.

Poison fish?  Australia has several.  We don’t.  In fact, we have fish that are good to eat.

Poison jellyfish?  Australia has a doozy. We have jellyfish, and they sting, but they are not, so far as I know, good to eat, even though they sound as if they would be.

Poison octopi?  Yep, they have this in Australia, and it comes to the shallow water so children can get at it. We don’t.  We do have non-poisonous octopus, which I have eaten but not enjoyed, and calamari, which I have never tasted because you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

Birds that can kill you?  Yes.  Not us.  Birds here might poop on you, and we’ve got some species that will steal your kitten if you’re not careful, but humans are safe from any type of bird that we have here.

Brutal kangaroos?  Pooh wouldn’t want anything to do with the Ninjaroos down under.  We are safe from kangaroos here, unless we get silly in a zoo.

Crocodiles?  We have alligators, but only along the gulf coast.  Yes, they are dangerous, but they also make lovely purses, and they are, some say, good to eat.

Sharks?  Okay, everybody has sharks, but Australia seems to be a magnet for them, and has lots of species.  We do have some shark attacks, but most of the times that I have seen shark, it has been accompanied by lemon wedges and a side salad.

Huge barren inland that can kill you with hunger, thirst, lostness?  We have the Mohave, but Australia has beat us with their inland desert.  For one thing, we have I-40 and I-10 and Love’s Truck Stops every 50 miles or so.

Dangerous platypus creatures?  Not around Dallas, no.

Dingoes that think of human children as prey?  We have coyotes, and in some places, wolves.  Pumas, too, can be a problem for kids or small adults who wander off by themselves or jog unwisely.  And there are packs of wild dogs (thanks to the city dwellers who dump their no-longer-cute dogs out in the country) that are dangerous to pets, livestock, and children.  So, call that a tie.

Yow!

Then I happened to think.

The first year that we lived in the Los Angeles area, when my folks came to visit us, they slept in their small motor home, parked in the parking lot of our apartment (call them townhouses if you must, but all they are is really inconvenient apartments) complex.  We ate dinner with them (Mom never ate anywhere but her own kitchen, even if it was nothing but a propane stove and a galvanized bucket) and visited a while.  Before I started back to my apartment, I paused to tell them something they needed to know.

“If you hear something that sounds like gunfire, don’t open the window and look out.  Just get down low and wait for it to finish up.”

Afterwards, when I realized what I’d said, I got to wondering why we ever left Texas.  Sure, there are gangs and idiots in Texas now, though not so much back then, in 1989.  But in Texas, a normal person can afford to live in places that do not have gangs and idiots.  In LA, normal people are — are what?  Out of place.

Still, Australia and their spiders and poison-tipped birds is scarier than anything I’ve seen here.

Except for when we went to Washington, D. C.