Australia: A Deadly Paradise?
By Jill D’Andrea

Australia is a land of glistening harbors, crystal sand beaches, clean, friendly cities, good food, great weather, and the top ten deadliest animals on the planet. Spending any length of time in a foreign country, even one so culturally similar to the USA, can be a bit challenging. Ever so challenging when you have to battle the threat of being indiscriminately bitten, stung, hole-punched, sprayed, slashed, munched on, or swallowed whole by one of Australia’s native predators. 

In the States we have threats of the Rare/Giant/Growling variety—things you see coming at you, fangs and claws bared.  In Australia you are likely to have a fatal encounter while innocently climbing into bed—and lucky for you if you catch the culprit for the purposes of identification.  It’s this notion of venom that particularly astounds me. It’s as if Nature designated the continent of Australia for its Biochemical Natural Defenses Testing Ground. So many creatures here have extreme and lethal methods of protecting themselves; but from what, really? Does the Box Jellyfish, for example, need the power to kill a grown man within minutes with just a brush of its tentacles? It barely has a brain or a discernable purpose, other than ruining the tourist trade for a good chunk of the country all summer long. And then there’s the Cone Shell: an innocuous-enough looking seashell that my kids would just love to collect if I didn’t drill into their heads that death would surely ensue if they did. Does it need to eject a venomous harpoon capable of puncturing a fingernail? Would a prominent position on my daughter’s “Pretty Things” shelf be so bad a fate that it would fight to the death to avoid it?

An Aussie friend gave me an old Readers Digest Coffee Table Volume called, no surprise here, “Dangerous Creatures of Australia.” Is there any other kind?  The authors assure me that, “…the most fearsome of the dangerous snakes is whichever one you step on.”  Thank God that’s all I need to know about snakes, in the face of the dizzying array of colors, lengths, widths, venom toxicities, venom yields, fang lengths, tempers and bite frequencies of the few dozen slithering death traps I may meet on a local bushwalk.

But the King of Poison is surely the Sydney Funnel-Web: the most dangerous spider in the world. It enjoys leafy walks at dusk and the occasional home intrusion.  But my Aussie friends assure me, “Aw, no worries—there’s an anti-venom!”  Apparently the fact that there exists an anti-venom invalidates the news that a big hairy spider just tried to murder you. The Pressure-Immobilization Method of First Aid for Bites may be more commonly known here than the Heimlich Maneuver. My favorite deadly thing on eight legs, however, is the White-Tailed Spider, whose bite can cause Necrotising Arachnidism (that’s Blindingly Painful and Irreversible Flesh-Eating Disease to you and me). It is my favorite because we seem to have unknowingly and unwillingly had one for a pet—captured one evening from our living room curtain and euthanized in our freezer.

But let’s not forget Australia’s own Rare/Giant/Growling variety: the Crocs and the Sharks.  The Saltwater Crocodile, or Saltie as it is so warmly nicknamed, is a bit of a misnomer, as it would be just as pleased to eat you in a river, swamp, or billabong (watering hole) hundreds of miles inland, as it would to dine on you at the seaside.  I am hastily assured by my Aussie friends that Croc attacks occur only in proximity to a big neon sign in plain English warning, “NO SWIMMING, CROCODILES, YOU IDIOT” So apparently a little common sense is all I really need to fend off a croc. Tell that to Steve Irwin.

The poor soul taken by a shark, on the other hand, was doubtlessly having a bit of bad luck. The randomness of death-by-shark was brought home to me vividly one day (while I was floating out beyond the breaking waves on the edge of the vast and hostile open sea, dressed, for all intents and purposes, as a tasty seal in my slick, black wetsuit) when my Aussie friend and boogie-boarding companion referred to my board simply as a Shark Biscuit. Not what you want to hear as your legs dangle beneath the surface.

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