Is it poisonous? Lesson 1

Why does it have to be able to do that?

We all know of the snakes and the spiders right? That Australia is home to the deadliest of these creatures. Fair enough, we can handle that.
But what's with everything else?
I mean come on! Bend an ear for a second and listen in to these campfire tales of deadly creatures, on land and in the sea, invertebrate and mammalian, on legs or in shells, that bite, poke, spear, spit, inject or just attack. And that's just the feild mouse.

The box jellfish and the irukandji jellyfish are lethal! I mean just plain unecessarily brutal. The former, also known as the Stinger, has four clusters of up to 60 tentacles containing millions of microscopic capsules capable of firing upon contact with human skin a venom-laden injection that can induce, in large enough doses, severe trauma, leading in some cases to an agonised death. The more you try to struggle and move, the more venom it fires, so the more tentacles touching you the worse the pain. It's unbelievable really. They swarm from Tropical North Queensland to the foot of the Barrier Reef, colonising the warm shallow waters West also. This means that the sea is off limits during summer, from about October through to about March. Did you hear that? You can't swim in the sea during summer because chances are you'll meet with one of these fellas and suffer immense, agonising pain, if you're lucky, and death by screaming if you're not. Am I alone in thinking, eerm, you what? Oh, and the Irukandji, you can't even see this fella, but his sting, while not as toxic as the Box Jellyfish, packs one hell of a punch. Invisible and deadly - the stuff of childhood nightmares.

Now, look at that nice Cone Shell. Isn't it pretty, so colourful and benign looking. Pick it up, have a look inside - and get harpooned in the face by a venomous toxic barb! Que, you what? The Cone Shells use venom to capture and immobilise their prey, and they also have a marked effect on the central nervous system of mammals too. The Conus Geographus, or Geography Cone, a pretty red-striped shell, is vicious, able to fire at it's victms a harpoon-like barbed projectile laden with enough paralytic toxins to render you a gibbering wreck, then put you in a coma. Can you hear the sea if you put one to your ear? Sure you can. You'll be floating face down at the bottom of it, sleeping with the fishes, mate.

Have you actually seen the size of a Redback? It's tiny. No bigger than the tip of your finger, but if it nips the end of that finger for some reason, you better have a plan, because if you don't, you may die. Now consider this. The redback, a spider, in comparison to a human, is tiny. Yet it can kill an human. Now why would it want to be able to do that? Why is it necessary that it has such toxic ability? What does it eat? Just how venomous does it need to be? At some stage in the past did they hunt and kill Tyrannosaurus Rex? Why is something so small so bloody deadly? It just boggles the mind.

Sodding March Flies. I mean really. Come on! Before the Mossies turn up for the evening shift, these things, almost two centimetres long, with a proboscis like an elephants trunk, fly around all day, with the tenacity of a ping-pong ball on a string, attempting to drive that javelin of a sucker into you and suck for all it's worth. And it's stupid, and slow, but desparate and persistent. I've shrieked as one buries itself in my finger, and then watched, horrified, as it clings on, even as I shake my hand wildly like an epileptic rapper, and it's only as I pound my hand onto the table that it relents and dies. Sometimes it flies off. But it'll get you through your jeans, a long-sleeved shirt is no bother, but as i said, it's really slow, so you kill it, but then 20 of them come to its funeral, so you kill them, you can't sit, or work, or do anything, so it's the killing fields, you're ever on patrol, where-the-hell-is-that-one-I-missed-ten-minutes-ago, the glint in your eyes grows manic and singular in purpose. Genocide. Create a mausoleum of dead flies for your petty enjoyment and satisfaction. Utter madness. The horror, oh, the horror.