This morning I was sitting here at the computer having my coffee and heard a familiar scratching noise in the roof space above me. For 25 years we’ve been visited by the local Black Headed Water Monitor lizards. We are pretty sure they live in the rocks that have been carefully excavated in the driveway, but they visit the large attic space of this house to catch mice. Which is just fine with us. There was that one year when they must have had their fill, however, and we stopped counting when we had caught 50 mice inside the house. We started putting traps outside but we didn’t keep count after that. There was a mouse plague that year and thankfully it hasn’t been that bad again. 

One of the features of living in a rammed earth house in an arid zone location with the bush only one row of houses away has been the wildlife, both large and small, gentle and poisonous.

You may wonder why we didn’t have all the cracks and crevices filled so the critters wouldn’t get inside. This is much easier to imagine accomplishing than to have done in reality. Because of the nature of the rough, uneven walls it is nearly impossible to do, even if I could have found someone who wanted the job and who I wanted in my house. The largest, obvious spaces have been filled but there are many, many others that the next owners can try their hand at filling.

Early in our first months here we learned what Huntsman spiders in abundance were like. They are a large spider that will feed on smaller insects and are not poisonous. Sounds good right? I know people who are happy to live with them. But that is not me. They are quiet and creepy and very large. I lost count of how many we trapped in the plastic ‘spider jar’ and released outside. Having the ceiling filled with insulation and, later the open topped kitchen cabinets capped, finally got rid of them. No photos. This was before iPhone photography and they refused to wait while I set up the tripod. I was busy catching and releasing…did I mention they jump?

Somewhere along the way we also had a small eastern brown snake in the house. Small does not mean less deadly however. I closed the dog in the spare bedroom while I waited for the snake handler to arrive and look for the snake. He couldn’t find it. My worst nightmare. Just as he was walking out the front door, leaving me about to have a meltdown, I saw the flick of the snake’s tail at the corner of the tv stand. I called out and the snake wrangler hustled back in. When he moved the stand we discovered a small hole in the rammed earth wall. Presumably it had been there since the house was built and somehow led to the outside where the snake had found it. He called to me to bring him a paper towel and he wrapped it tightly and shoved it into the hole, and after looking around the immediate area again, he was completely convinced the snake had found its way out again. The next day I mixed up the earth and adhesive solution I use to patch the walls and sealed the paper towel and hole forever. It must have worked, no more Mr Snake.

Geckos have been a thing in my life for decades. We had them in Florida and we had ‘barking geckos’ in Darwin, where we lived the first seven years of marriage. They were called ’barking geckos’ but I thought it was more of a chirp. The ones here in Alice are quiet. Instead, they shed…their skins. Whole. And if that isn’t enough, they strangely only shed their skins in one windowsill of the house. We’ve cleaned dozens out of our bedroom window over the years. I find them weirdly charming. They are diaphanous and you can actually see the individual cells that make up each shed skin.

The furry critters are usually the most fun and least anxiety causing of our visitors. Because there is what we call a ‘breezeway’ between the studio/carport and the house, it is a convenient access route for the Euros and Kangaroos. We’ve had hundreds over the years and mostly they are calm unless something spooks them. But the young males are sometimes a bit pubescent and one decided to ‘box’ our lovely 4ft tall Ponytail Palm breaking the top right out of it. The occasional misguided roo would bump into a window or screen door but not often. The only danger to us is if we step out into the breezeway without looking left and right, to avoid a collision!

A few years ago I rescued a tiny joey from the walking trail. There had been dingoes in the area and the Kangaroo Sanctuary said the little male joey was probably jettisoned from the mum’s pouch trying to save her own life. He was not to survive, even with the best of efforts, as sometimes happens the Sanctuary comforted me. At least he was in a loving, warm and safe environment for the last weeks of his life.

Then there are the furry critters that are unsettling. One of the unique sounds we have heard are dingoes singing in the night, a bit like coyotes only the sound is not quite the same. The dingoes sound almost like they are chatting to each other at times and when you awake is a sleepy stupor you sometimes mistake them for a party breaking up. One morning I looked out at the green in front of our house and there were two dingoes relaxing as if they owned the place. At times we will see them in town often and then it will be years before we see them again. I’ve caught them watching (stalking?) me as I walk early in the morning. They attacked our neighbour’s small terrier when they were walking one morning, and another neighbour had their small dog taken by the dingoes, never to be seen again.

One day I was laying on the floor reading (why, I don’t know) and I decided I needed a pillow under my knees so my back would be more comfortable. I pulled my pillow off the bed and shoved it under my knees and felt a sharp prick. Thinking it was just a feather sticking through the case I rearranged it, but the second time felt a pain that sent me calling out. The perpetrator was a 4inch (8cm) long centipede. It had been inside my pillow case but crawled out while I was trying to figure out what had happened. I moved out of the room and called my husband who was a few minutes away at work and he came home to find the centipede and ‘take care of it’, while I was on the phone with the GP’s office telling me to put ice on it. It swelled to about the size of my palm and about 1/2inch high. It was very sore for a couple of days like a bad bee sting. Gradually it went down until a week to the day after the event, it suddenly swelled and was sore and itchy for another couple of days.

Once I saved a tiny Mistletoe bird that flew into the window. And another time a bird flew inside the house while a friend was here. We sat with the door open while we had coffee and waited for it to fly out again. Lately we’ve had a cute little bunny hiding under the thick grevillea and coming out occasionally to eat grass and nibble on the jade plant, which the kangaroos like too.

Last but not least…was the sweet little frog that decided to live with us for some months three years ago. I would have preferred him to not be living in our toilet so that I feared wetting him in the middle of the night, but that said, he was very considerate about not singing more than once most nights and when he decided his time was up, he hopped into a corner and just ‘dried’. I was very sad to discover him when I was cleaning one day, but he left a lasting memory.

To see a wedge tail eagle riding the thermals as I hung out washing, or the lines of Witchetty caterpillars trailing to their pupate phase, and the many other creatures I would not have seen anywhere else has been an education, a privilege and (mostly) a joy. One of the most delightful memories was not in this house, but on my way home from taking Don to the airport. Something I had longed to experience but the chances were slim I would see it was the breathtaking sight of a huge chatter of Budgerigars in the fields near the airport. It lasted so long I was able to park the car and walk into the tall grass and photograph them and then just stand there, mesmerised–reminding myself to breathe.