Comments

• I love the Aussie Magpie. They are only aggressive when they have a nest with eggs or young and will usually only attack instinctively, i have had a few nest in trees in my grandmother's backyard and they are surprisingly intelligent birds. Once they realise that you are a permanent fixture in their habitat and you are no threat, they are fine and rarely attack. *Though i guess ever animal has it's own personality.
  They have had 3 different families now, at first they would try to steal the catfood, so i figured that i wouldn't be making the situation much worse by feeding them scraps and leftovers in a different area to where the cat eats.
  They would only come occasionally and/or only when they had young, obviously loving meat scraps. Anyway, very gentle, smart birds as long as you treat them correctly.
• Hey there, I remember when i was a child there was a nest in my bed in Sydney's inner west, i'm not sure if i was ever bitten, but i have never suffered any necrotic ulcers.
  Because my grandmother has a large garden and is unable to do the work herself, i am helping out, so i did some reading on all the venomous Aussie spiders and apparently there is a chemical in the white-tails venom that is very similar to that of the Brown Recluse spider in the US (also causing severe necrosis).
  From what i read the toxin only affects about 15% of the population but for those who are affected, they have found that nitroglycerin patches applied directly on the necrotic tissue fixes it up immediately... though i have spoken to a few GP's in Sydney and none of them had any idea where they could even get nitroglycerin patches (a few had never even heard such things exist).
  Anyway just thought for people like Mort, this may be useful in some way (i have always found that it pays to come up with a few idea's of your own before you go to your GP).