Strange girl and I are walking into town. We walk through Sydney University. For those who've never been, its quite lovely. It looks a lot like a well-established British university, right down to the mishmash of different architectural styles (some much more attractive than others). However, the grounds and the flora betray its foreigness - the trees and bushes and flowers are not at all European looking, and the effect is a little like coming across the ruins of a university after the jungle has swallowed it.
We see a nice-looking building, and we decide to take photos of it. We walk up a small embankment. Its quite a warm day, and we've been walking for quite a while, so I suggest to Strange girl that we sit for a moment and catch our breath, and point to a flat rock. She sits down, and I'm about to do the same. But when I notice this, not two feet away behind from her head, and I leap back and scream:
Strange girl turns round, gets up, and lurches back with me
"What is it?!" I ask
"Yeah, stay away from that" she replies
"Why, what is it?!!"
"I don't know"
"Is it dangerous?"
"It's colourful. In general, stay away from the colourful ones"
Then Strange girl does something that, if it were done for a joke, it would be quite cruel. But she didn't do it for a joke, she did it in complete earnestness, and totally without malice:
Strange girl: (while peering at me) "What's that on your face?"
Me: freaking out, flailing limbs and slapping myself in the face multiple times "What, what, what is it?!!!"
Her: after I stop, and in disbelief "It was only a fly."
At which point I berated her quite loudly, asking if she was for real, doing a "what's that on your face" not twenty seconds after I've been freaked out by finding a previously unnoticed giant, terrifying looking spider inches from my head. She then explains that if someone points out that there is a bug on me in the future, I should freeze dead still and let them deal with it rather than move and/or slap myself in the face. Which strikes me as reasonable advice, IF I were accompanied by someone who HAD a modicum of bug-sense, whereas in fact I have her.
It is for this reason that learning how to identify dangerous Australian creatures has moved to the very top of my skills-to-learn list.
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