When Insects Attack

This is from my hairy ex-housemate Richard (MUK is the Melbourne Ukelele Kollective):

Thought I'd share this with you all. On Thursday I bought a bunch of gladioli to decorate my hat with, as MUK's latest busking session at the Prahran markets had a floral theme. On my way there this morning I discovered the unadvertised free caterpillar crawling up my hat, taking a few steps then waving the front half of itself around like a performance artist's interpretation of Munch's Scream, then a few more steps, another Munch's Scream moment, and so on. Very existentialist behaviour for a caterpillar. As I was on a train there was nowhere to put it, so I decided to leave it on a shrub somewhere at Prahran station, and let it crawl around my fingers. Shortly after that I felt a stinging sensation on my knuckle, so I looked and found this caterpillar had started chowing down on it. Even when I moved my fingers around and nudged it to try to discourage it, it kept chewing. And when I got to Prahran and found a suitable plant, I had to really rub its nose in the leaf I was trying to put it on to before it got the message. For its size it sure left behind enough blood as well. I didn't know caterpillars were carnivorous!

There is apparently more than a couple of species carnivorous caterpillars out there, but none here in Oz. Check out this happy little fellow. Here he is in action!

Stoopid Horse!

Foolishly, I once again wagered a whopping $5 dollars on the... I believe it's called the Melbourne Cup... office sweep.

I picked number 17 at random out of the hat. I didn't even know what the horse was called until I just looked it up. And it was:

Zabeat.

Thus fulfilling my one criteria: that I get a horse with a silly name. Although as the guy running the sweap said "They ALL have silly names."

Needless to say, I think I was cleaning my flat when the race itself was run. To his (her? it's?) credit my horsey lead the race for two thirds of the running, then faaaaaaaaaded away... to last! He he. So in other words, went about as well as my other recent attempts at gambling :-)

Did anyone else notice that the horse which came in second was called "Pop Rock"? The winner and his little friend in second place are from Japan. So I suppose we should be happy they weren't called "Mighty Power Runner Happy Horse" or "Hello Horsey" or even "Three Power Bounce Radio Armchair Rectangle".