Local fauna

I've already become well acquainted with "the Aussie salute". Imagine you're walking the streets of, say, Melbourne, and everyone you pass by invariably waves at you, in a manner conveying "what a terrible smell". Don't worry, chances are you don't stink that much. They're just trying to get the flies away from their faces.

With little success, that I can tell you. Aussie flies are nothing if not perseverant, tenacious and fearless. They're also very stupid. Getting on your face and driving you nuts is not enough, no; they have to get into your nose and mouth and ears to prove their worthiness to the rest of the clan. Their survival strategy seems to be based on your inadvertently eating or squashing them.

You can also just kill them purposefully. Let them settle for 2 seconds and grab them, they won't see you coming. Same with mosquitoes.

On Sunday night, I was sitting in Sydney's Hyde Park, and as I brought out some bread I was charged by a creature out of nowhere. I first identified it as a cat, but turned out to be the marsupial equivalent of a squirrel, a "possum" I think. It just ran to me and started sniffing me up and down as if I was just an interesting chocolate statue. Someone else could have just grabbed it by the throat and called it Supper. Me, I had to very purposefully nudge it, then kick it to get it running on another scent trail.

I wonder what warp in the space-time continuum or perturbation in the Force is preventing Natural Selection from working here.