Goodnight {everyone} and have a lovely yesterday!

I’ll leave you with an Aussie creepy crawly story….

IN the suburbs, on the coast and in the bush, Australia’s venomous creatures are out in force and hospitals have reported a sharp increase in the number of snake, spider and ant bites.

The number of funnel-webs found in Sydney has been unusually high for this time of year, while hundreds of people have already been treated for snakebites this summer.

Vets have also reported a spike in the number of household pets killed by ticks.

Joel Shakespeare, the head spider keeper at the Australian Reptile Park, said it was normal for about 10 funnel-web spiders to be “donated” to the park at this time of year. “But in the past week, we’ve had 50 brought in,” Mr Shakespeare said from the park on the NSW central coast.

The spiders are milked for their venom by Mr Shakespeare, who said they seemed to be carrying out their annual mating ritual a month earlier than normal.

Although there have been a couple of funnel-web bites this spring-summer — including that of a two-year-old NSW boy in November — there have been no fatalities attributed to the species in Australia since 1982.

Naren Gunja, deputy medical director and toxicologist at the NSW Poison Information Centre, said the sharp jump in the number of people presenting at hospitals with snakebites could be the result of the east coast experiencing warmer weather.

Indeed Australia is in the grip of a heatwave that yesterday gave Sydney its hottest day in two years and Perth its 10th consecutive day of 32C or hotter.

“It’s normally young children and middle-aged men that are bitten. Children don’t understand how dangerous snakes can be, while often alcohol is involved with older males who are bitten,” Dr Gunja said.

Read on….and goodnight!