Crumpled Home

There are some people that say that you don’t choose your pets; your pets choose you. In this case, they may be right.

The morning started fairly normally, breakfast for the kids, lunches being packed, and a somewhat bizarre conversation about how useful it might be to have a magnetron embedded in your robot arm.

Benefits: The ability to quickly prepare hot beverages and to shoot popcorn into your enemies eyes…

Negatives: None!

We wonder why every robot doesn’t have one…

As pieces of fruit were selected for their lunch boxes, we noticed a rather grim looking pear in the basket. Closer inspection revealed that a family of fruit flies had recently taken up residence. The pear had turned to the dark side. As it began its brief journey to the rubbish bin, RJ spoke up:

RJ: Wait!

Dad: Yeah?

RJ: I… Can I have that?

Dad: This? The rotten pear?

RJ: Ummm. Yes? I need it.

Dad: What on earth for?

RJ: I… I want to do an experiment.

(He’s crafty, this one. He knows that science is the ultimate trump card in our family.)

Dad: What kind of experiment?

RJ: Well… I want to breed some some mutant fruit flies.

Dad: And how do you plan to do that?

RJ: First, I need to extract some carrot DNA, and then I’ll feed it to them. And then…

Dad: Hold up! That wont work! I eat banana DNA all the time and I’m not a yellow bellied mutant. Stomachs break down DNA when they digest it.

RJ: Curses! What if I just put it on the eggs? Before they hatch? Before they have stomachs?

Dad: That might just work.

RJ: And then I’ll have mutant orange fruit flies! And I can take over the world!

Dad: Okay. But your evil plans have to wait until you get home from school. You’re still in your pajamas, Dr. Doom.

RJ's latest pets, and the ingredients for their carroty future -- key components of his plan for world domination.

This is the tale of a lizard, a fairly ordinary garden skink, just 2 or 3 inches long. The lizard had been living a quiet happy life, basking in the sunshine, chewing on the occasional millipede, doing lizardy things with his buddies. He had dreams of a long life filled with sunshine and tasty insects, but there was a problem with his plans. He chose to live out his days in a schoolyard; a schoolyard that included several precocious young children with very quick hands.

On its own this may not have been a problem, but these kids were quite young and not always as aware of their strength as they might be, especially when weighed on the scale of a lizard. One afternoon, the lizard was caught by one of RJ’s friends and as he attempted to wriggle his way to freedom he was… squeezed.

Now most parts of a lizard are probably reasonably squishy and flexible, so this might not have been a problem, except that the child had the lizard by the head. Lizard heads are typically not so squishy and they contain a lot of things that are important to a lizard’s general success in life. The end result was an ejected eyeball, a small trickle of blood, and a rather unresponsive lizard.

Most children, after identifying that the essential essence of lizard had been released, would have abandoned him then and there but, as we know, RJ can rarely be classified in the group of “most children.”

RJ, moved by the lizard’s plight, rushed to the scene with an emergency response team and attempted to resuscitate the poor creature. No effort was spared. A sock was removed, moistened in the sparkling, clean waters of a nearby drinking fountain to clean the lizards wounds. An empty lunchbox was brought forward, complete with a selection of different food scraps and a piece of bark for shelter. Gentle soothing words of comfort were spoken, but to no avail. The lizard remained unresponsive.

RJ adjusts some things in Lizzy's aquarium so he can be more comfortable. A lizard has certain needs, apparently.

Undaunted, RJ remained convinced that “Thin Lizzy” just needed some time to recover and brought him home. The afternoon was filled with constructing an appropriate habitat, clean sand, bark, rocks and a delicious assortment of insects, millipedes and other arthropods — truly a delightful lizardy nirvana. It was surely just a matter of time before Lizzy recovered. At the end of the day, RJ carefully placed Lizzy on a warm rock and left him for the night.

The first thing the next morning, RJ rushed downstairs to check his patient… and… and… It was a miracle! Lizzy had moved during the night! He was now laying on his back beside the warm rock! Triumphant, RJ declared that Lizzy would be coming to school that day to show everyone the amazing recovery. Admittedly, Lizzy was still rather “lethargic” (some would say comatose or deceased). This fact was not lost on RJ. As he carefully placed Lizzy back up on the rock he announced that “Lizzy is just playing dead. He is really VERY good at it.”

Several times during the day, Lizzy would craftily bide his time until there were no observers and then scurry off around his enclosure, only to resume his dead lizard act when others showed up. RJ’s classmates were amazed, particularly by Lizzy’s unprecedented resolve to remain motionless in the face of close-proximity screams and prods with fingers. Lizzy returned home to continue his convalescence.

For the next few days, Lizzy was an ideal pet. He didn’t require a lot of attention (or food, water or air, for that matter). He kept within his enclosure without making any attempts to escape. He wasn’t even venomous, as many of our previous pets have been. If you look past a few highly unfortunate events, Lizzy really seemed to have a long, bright future ahead of him.

Despite how well he had integrated into our daily life, Lizzy’s tenure as RJ’s own personal pet was not long lived, and it really was his own fault. Three days later as the weather warmed up a bit, Lizzy learned a new trick. Not content with an occasional leap from his warm rock, he replaced his silent contentment with a new cry for help.

A terrible, foul, stinky cry for help.

Thin Lizzy moved out that afternoon. He lives across the street at the park now. We’re sure he’s happier over there.

Besides, RJ has some new pets now…

(to be continued)

(while playing lego together)

Dad: So RJ, if you were at your birthday party and a giant, venomous spider showed up, threatening everyone…

RJ: (curious) Yeah?

Dad: What kind of weapon would you use to fight it? A sword? A spear?

RJ: Well… Hmm… To kill a giant spider,..  I would use… A giant boot!

(while walking to lunch)

RJ: (excited) Dad. Stop here! I want to show you something!

Dad: Yeah? What’s up?

RJ: (pointing to ground) Right here. See? This metal plate. It’s a lid to something; you can open it!

Dad: Sure. I guess you could… but…

RJ: (starts struggling to lift heavy plate steel cover) Look! There are no nails or anything holding it down, you can just…

Dad: (worried about RJ’s fingers being crushed) Stop, RJ! Wait! Wait!… Arrgh… Okay, let me help.

(Dad decides it’s easier to help RJ lift the cover safely than to talk him out of it… revealing a dark hole filled with a crawling mass of hundreds of cockroaches and crickets, who decide to make a break for it out of the hole.)

RJ & Dad: ………. Yeeeaaarrrckk! …………..

(RJ wisely jumps back. Dad is left to slowly and carefully replace the heavy steel cover, while dodging the rush of panicked roaches that have decided his shoes would make a terrific new hiding place).

RJ: (freaking out) Dad! Who are we going to tell about this? What can we do?

Dad: What do you mean? It’s their home. They obviously love it there. We can just leave them alone.

RJ: (incredulous) Are you crazy, man?! They’ll keep growing in there and growing and growing! They’ll take over the whole city! All the shops! Everything!

Dad: RJ, calm down! Have a look over there — there’s another hole. I think I see one over there too and another over there. They’re all probably full of these guys, and they’ve been like this for ages.

RJ: This is a really big deal! I can’t believe you’re not doing anything!

Dad: It’s fine, mate. Really.

RJ: It is NOT fine! My favorite restaurant is right across the road!

RJ: (pointing to a Halloween decoration) That one’s broken, Dad.

Dad: It’s probably okay. Spiders have so many legs, they can probably afford to lose one every so often.

RJ: No! They can’t!

Dad: What do you mean? They have eight to start with, right?

RJ: Yes, but after they lose a leg, they can’t be a spider any more… They have to be a pider.

In August, as many of us suffered colds and ear infections, another birthday rolled around, RJ played his soccer final, and the kids dressed up for Book Day. We also spent a great weekend up at Gingin with some friends and discovered LR really can be an angel when she wants to.

Make a wish! Mom slices into her favorite cake, pinapple upside-down cake!

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The next stage of our adventure brought us to Monkey Mia, where we met some friendly mammals with a taste for seafood and thousands of crustacean squatters before dragged through the ocean from a high speed catamaran. After a hair-raising drive through an extended muddy bog, we made it to Gnaraloo Station, a delightful paradise marred only slightly by a small infestation of surfers and a veritable plague of ecstatic, frisky whales.

After spending the night in Denham, we got up early the next morning and drove to Monkey Mia. Every day, a crowd gathers on the shore to wait for a pod of dolphins who have been fed there, every day, for years.

LR and RJ try to spot them from the jetty.

The water was incredibly still and calm... Dad had the rare chance to get some early morning photography done while waiting.

LR stands knee deep in water as the pod arrives.

One of the park rangers hands over some of the delicious booty.

The kids spent some time snorkelling and exploring the shallow waters of the bay.

LR and RJ discovered hermit crabs near the shore... There were hundreds of them!

LR heads off to collect another handful of crabs!

Mom booked us onto a boat cruise. It was a great way to get out into the bay and see some sharks, turtles, dolphins and perhaps even a dugong.

RJ and Dad rode in the net, trying to spot sharks as we cruised the reefs.

The boat stopped by a pearl oyster farm where we learned the ins and outs of farming pearls. As we watched the presentation, RJ suddenly darted forward between the speaker's legs to save this tiny crab from being stepped on.

RJ had an audience as he practiced his surf moves!

On the ride back, LR and Dad made up their own jokes to entertain themselves.

One of the wild dolphins had great fun riding the bow wave from the boat.

Once we left the reef area and returned to deeper water, the captain loaded the net behind the boat with passengers and took off -- the ultimate ocean cold-tub.

The next morning, we were off again, heading north past Carnarvon and on to Gnaraloo Station. We stopped along the way to watch the blowholes, as whales happily flopped about just off the coast. Despite the best efforts from the blowholes, with deafening roars and tremendous columns of water blasting from the rock, the kids were still way more interested in the tidal pools.

LR did her very best to break her ankle by leaping maniacally from rock to rock across the puddles, but failed miserably.

Gnaraloo Station lies at the end of a dirt track that runs north of Carnarvon. During the Summer, there is so little rain that the track is packed hard and just about any vehicle can make it through. It turns out that during Winter, it’s a bit of a different story.

In our case, torrential rains had come through about three days prior, and the track had been completely flooded. What was left for us was a series of opaque muddy lakes and bogs of thick, sticky, orange mud connected by small sections of track. The owners of the station had put out the official word to the community that only real four-wheel drives should attempt the track, and even then to stick to the ‘chicken-tracks’. Chicken tracks are side tracks, usually weaving deleriously through the bushland for a few hundred metres, that avoid the worst of the bogs and deepest pools. They’ve been amusingly named by the four-wheel drive enthusiasts for those people who chicken out when driving the main track.

When we called the station and informed them about our rear-wheel drive, towing a heavy trailer, they said, “Sure, come on up. You’ll be fine.” We didn’t discover their ‘official’ recommendation until after we got there.

At this point, we had 80 km (50 miles) of this kind of track ahead of us. Every few hundred metres, we would encounter another massive bog which would require getting out and inspecting. We very seriously considered turning around and not continuing on.

We arrived, triumphant, but utterly nervewracked and exhausted. We took our place amongst the four wheel drives and tried to pretend it had been great fun.

At the base of the cliff in front of camp, there's a famous surfing spot. It was pretty spectactular, with great waves rolling in continuously, all day long.

Dog digging competition!!! On your mark, get set, go!

What's that, Mom? The water's a bit cold?

RJ really enjoyed snorkelling too. He spotted all kinds of fish, and thought he had made friends with two, but discovered they were just damselfish trying to scare him away from their algae farm!

At every opportunity, LR hunted for the most precious shells on the sea floor.

At low tide, we could explore the safer sections of the cliff face. There were lots of little caves and rock pools along the way.

We hiked lots of trails around Gnaraloo, climbing cliffs and exploring. It was a terrific place to watch whales happily flop and splash about, with a few showing up every ten minutes or so.

Some awful, terrible, bad parents set an awful, terrible, unsafe example for their children by jumping down into this sea cave to pick up some pretty rocks, and then frantically scrambling out before the waves came crashing into it.

RJ and his new favorite pet... A 'cuddle' fish.

Big news!!! We discovered RJ's first wiggly tooth!

These super cute bearded dragons were everywhere. They were incredibly curious and had absolutely no fear of people, but at the speeds they dart around, they have no reason to be.

Gnaraloo Bay is absolutely stunning -- some of the most spectacular coral and aquatic wildlife in the world, just a metre below the surface of a huge expanse of crystal blue water gently lapping against perfect, white, fine-grained sand, and aside from this amazingly great family that showed up, almost completely deserted.

RJ and LR gathered shells and rocks built an enormous city that spanned the beach.

These huge sand dunes were just a short hike from the campsite.

It took a while to climb to the top; they were bigger than they looked and we were weighed down by an impressive number of dead crabs.

We finally made it to the top, where we watched more whales springing about.

LR and Dad wandered off with their cameras to get some pictures of the surfers. They had to be pretty brave to attempt the entry from the reef into the crashing waves.

The kids made friends with the boys at the neighbouring camp. Ledgy, their dad, even set up a totem tennis set for them, which our kids promptly dominated.

Oh no! Camping hair!!! (and she still looks gorgeous.)

Being wintertime, we were allowed to have a campfire. RJ worked on his marshmallow chargrilling technique.

LR, to Mom's delight, worked on a careful, slow-roasting technique, producing a series of perfectly toasted marshmallows.

Click and explore this map to see where we actually went!

View NorthWest Australia 2011 in a larger map

(before school)

Dad: RJ, what’s this word here?

RJ: Uhhhmmmm… Can Scorpy have a try?

Dad: I didn’t know scorpions could read, but okay. Go ahead Scorpy.

RJ: (holding toy scorpion to the screen) L… E… E… P… S… Leeps!

Dad: Scorpy… I think you’re reading it backwards.

RJ: Yes! Bad Scorpy! You got it all wrong!

(10 minutes later)

RJ: Now Scorpy, I’ve tied this string on you until you learn to read properly. No more backwards reading!
… and when I get home from school, I’m going to put you in a cup of water with crystals dissolved in it… and then you will be trapped in a crystal forever. Is that what you want?

In April of 2011, we embarked on a terrific adventure to the island of Bali, in Indonesia. It is actually closer to Perth than the other capital cities within Australia, so it’s a popular holiday destination for Western Australians… which is one of the reasons we’ve been hesitant to go.

After a tiny 3 hour flight, we met Poppa, Grammy, the cousins (P. and M., Auntie Bron and Uncle Troy), our aunt and uncle from the US (Carrie and Paul), and finally, our second cousin Sophie and spent a week there staying at an incredible, luxurious villa (Puri Angsa, in Canggu, Bali) together.

It really was like staying in paradise, with each family having their own cottage or series of rooms, most of them directly overlooking the pool. The villa even had their own pet monkeys, which conveniently avoided any potential ‘Enchanted Monkey Forest‘ disasters that we had worried about.

We arrived at our gate with plenty of time to spare and some amazing colours in the sky.

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RJ: Watch out, Dad. They’re all robots now.

Dad: Who’s that?

RJ: The spiders and insects… Even the scorpions. They’ve all been replaced by robots.

Dad: Let me guess. The bad guys have a plan to take over the world?

RJ: Yes, and it starts by replacing all the venomous creatures with robots.

RJ: … but not the lizards. They’re still on our side.