Monday, January 30 .....

We certainly have our share of strange creatures around here but Jamie came across one the other day which is as strange as any. It was certainly a nest, made of mud and shaped like a cylinder. When he moved it, it broke in half and seemed to be full of spiders. First thought – a spider’s nest, but which spider makes a mud nest? On closer look, the spiders seemed to be full-size and were not all the same: some were brown, others grey and others had patterns on their back. Second thought – it’s a nest of some other creature which has put the spiders in it.

The obvious candidate was a wasp so it was clearly a case for the internet. It seems there are several species of wasp which make a mud nest, with in which an egg is laid and spiders provided as food for the grub when it hatched out. The spiders are not dead; they are paralysed so they remain fresh until the grub is ready to eat them. You can see in the photograph the remains of the nest, spiders and a grub or two. The wasps look deadly and can give a painful bite but are ‘reluctant to bite’, according to the Australian Museum website. I’ll take that with a grain of salt and avoid them at all cost.

Yesterday was the baptism of Josef Santino Ramirez, the first-born of Shiela, one of the Occupational Therapists we brought out from the Philippines to work at Giant Steps. She met a Filipino man here, married and now lives in a nice house in Launceston. Her mother is visiting from their rice farm in Albay Province and is enjoying the chance to see the life her daughter has made for herself. Marilyn has volunteered to look after the little boy for a day or two a week when Shiela returns to work and she will just love this. The family have decided to call him Santino.

The church service was as expected but the party afterwards was fantastic. Probably 100 people, most of them Filipino crammed into the Mowbray Bowling Club, with wonderful food, an open bar and the loudest music you can imagine. Lots of women danced (it seems not to be the culture for men to join in) and some people sang. I left early (the music was too much for my delicate ears) but Marilyn stayed on to get to know the baby better.