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My Favourite Creature In My Life? The Dog Sleeping Over There ...

There are many creatures in my life, some of them loved and much welcomed, others not so ...

By Carolyn CordonPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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This is our Pharaoh Hound, Missy. She is our only dog now.

A life with many creatures

So yes, there is a dog in my life, Missy, and she is my favourite creature, the one that takes up the most time, for sure. We feed Missy, let her in and out of the house, clean up after her, feed her, and tend to her medical needs ...

We live in a rural area, one a property with many trees, so there are many birds in and around our place. I'm a bit of an amateur bird watcher, and I keep track on which birds there are at our place, watching and listening to them all. I have a record of the different kinds of birds I've seen here, and there are over forty different ones ...

Unfortunately we also have mice in the house at the moment, definitely not welcome guests, those little creatures. It would be nice if Missy would helpus out with this, but she isn't interested in chasing mice, not at all. She likes bigger and scarier creatures.

I'm Australian, living in South Australia, and every Summer, we have to look out for snakes, and make sure Missy doesn't get bitten by one. It happened once and we could easily have lost her to the venom of the Brown Snake, the most common one here in central Australia, as well as in eastern Australia and Victoria too.

We get a few different kinds of lizards here too, in Summer. The Blue-tongue Lizard is the largest one we get, and I've seen tiny little skinks in the past in Summer too. We also have stumpy tail lizards too, which Missy will go for, if they get into the backyard, the same as will the Blue-tongue lizard.

There is another creature I see here sometimes, that could be dangerous if I got bitten/stung or whatever they do by it,, the Redback Spider, which I sometimes see in our letter box. I leave them alone, and they leave me alone, most of the time. I've never been frightened of one of them, the way I have been of the snakes.

Speaking of smaller, non-mammal creatures, we get quite a few different ones. There are the bit palm of hand-sized Huntsman Spiders, which I try to take outside if I see one. My husband doesn't like spiders, and he'll kill them, if I don't get them safely out of the house in time.

We also have many, many flies in summer, the bane of the summer time, that creature ... If you want to have a fun time outside, having a barbeque or something, you can bet the flies will all know about it, and invade your space, bit time!

Oh, and another unwelcome small flying creature we get here are mosquitoes, horrid little bitey things, that make my skin swell up in lumps if and when they bite me, in 'mossie' season. So during the day, in the warm to hot months it's flies being irritating, and as night time comes along, and ito the evening, it's the mosquitoes being pests, itchy ouchy pests.

And ants, we have lots and lots of ants. These aren't pests though, not at our place. The ants stay outside, especially in one spot in our garden, and I enjoy watching them sometimes during the day, as they actively go about their 'anty' business. I don't know a lot about ants, but I'd like to learn more.

These ants are bigger than the pesky little ones my mother complains about sometimes, when I see her. Her ants get inside her house, and she might see one or two of them in her kitchen cupboards. I wouldn't like that much either, I suspect. Ants should stay outside!

There's a bigger creature, a pest, that we get here too, not one that would bite me, but it may bite Missy, if it ever came too close to her, or she to it. It's a cat, or possibly more than just one cat, that hangs around our place, usually in the places Missy can't get to, but not always. Missy almost caught a cat here once, and I have a feeling one cat that hangs around may be that one from the past. If so, it really should stay away!

And while it hasn't happened for many years, we've also had visits in the past, from horses. My father was a Harness Racing trainer and we sometimes looked after an injured horse before it was sent off for a longer rest in a paddock. It was interesting to have one of these big creatures as part of our 'family', for a short while, now and then.

And we get things attracted by our swimming pool sometimes too, mostly frogs, that should have got into the pond we have instead of the pool. The pool, with the chlorine in it, isn't safe for frogs, so we try to get them out, and put them in, or near the pond instead. we also get dragonflies flying over the pool, in the warmer months, and they are welcome, causing no problems at all.

Another flying creature is the Monarch Butterfly, which is a beautiful orange. black, and white butterfly that comes here in the warmer months as well. I have fond memories from my childhood of these lovely butterflies, and am always glad to see them, flying sedately around the front or back yard.

There are many, many more little creatures we have around our place, but I am not at all knowledgeable of most of what we get here. Many different insects though, I do know that! And we get big moths sometimes, after it has rained, and these are definitely of interest to Missy, who loves to chase them. She is fascinated by other moths too, and will happily stay outside at night, chasing moths attracted by our outside lights.

So while Missy is my favourite crearture at our place, there are a great many more creatures to choose from, if I was to go for a non-dog critter!

wild animals
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