News & Updates from Vicki Avcin ~ AusCrafts · Page 55

Our orange tree was laden with oranges again this year and we thought great, plenty of Vit C to eat and juice coming into winter.

Imagine waking up one morning with nearly half the crop on the ground. We had no idea why.

So looked in our local gardening group and found lots of other locals also had the same thing happen to their trees also.

This has never happened in the area before. Lots of googling happening and calls to agricultural places put it down to a Fruit Sucking Moth also known as Fruit Piercing Moth.

These moths attack near ripe and ripe fruit at night, the reason no one saw them.

Once we knew what it was, it was night patrol in our gardens where we found these huge moths in their hundreds.

The wings are typically dark brown with distinctive orange markings and they pierce the skin of just about any fruit and suck out the liquid contents.

Only sign is a black spot at the point of entry and the flesh around is soft and pulpy or dry and pithy depending on the type of fruit.

There is very little in the way of killing them as because fruit is so close to ripe, chemical sprays cannot be used.

Fruit can be covered with paper or cotton cloth or picking the fruit before it is ripe.

Bug zapper lights only work to an extent but because of the amount of them some have taken to playing tennis by torchlight.

We put out fruit each night for our resident possum but they have even found that, so with torch in one hand and a fly swatter in the other we are killing about 20 a night!

Nearly everyone now has lost most of their fruit crop around here, oranges, lemons, bananas, persimmons, paw paws, and other fruits if it was allowed to tree ripen, its now gone!

The picture shows the moths on the possums apple and one nights loss of oranges.

For the past month we have had an influx of butterflies in our region. It is not only occurring here but all over south east Queensland.

Butterflies of all kinds and colours and if you are wearing a bright colour they will come and land on you or if you put a hand/arm out they will come and land too.

One of the butterflies is the Blue Tiger Butterfly. Very pretty and not as common as the orange Tiger Butterfly, they are a delight to see. They come from up north where they are more common.Recent heavy rain has caused them to migrate down the east coast.

During times like the recent drought, females stop breeding and adults congregate in large numbers along the north-east coast of Australia.

Normally it is after rainfall events that the adults disperse and migrate and head down the coast. The Blue Tiger Butterfly will be migrating for approximately another week down the coast.

As they have a long life-span for a butterfly, of up to six months, when the cooler months of April and May arrive, they can be seen migrating north again where they congregate in central and northern Queensland.Their preferred food is the corky milk vine (it contains chemicals which are poisonous) but they lay their eggs and feed off the sap.

Birds have been known to die after eating these butterflies because of this.

Well I hope this weeks news finds everyone in these crazy times safe and well and doing what they can to keep clear of catching this horrible virus.

I am working at our Local Government elections for the last two weeks and I really have no choice to interact with people.

We are doing our best to do the safe distancing and keeping everyone well apart but where I am there are a lot of people that we have no control over on the footpaths where they are lined up outside.

Inside I can tell people where to stand and when to go through to get their ballot papers and the big majority have been good.

Just some couples who question why they have to be 1.5m apart when they sleep in the same bed. Anyway all our fire service training is cancelled as is meetings and anything apart from actually responding to fire calls.

We have strict guidelines for when we have to do that too.

As my hubby who had surgery two weeks ago was sitting at home he came up with this idea that as all his fire gear is sitting idle (he is off active service at the moment), he decided that he found use for his P2 mask and goggles for when he goes to the shops as the photo shows.

I guess in these trying times we might all be resorting to this when we go shopping now.

Well its worldwide and isnt getting better. Supermarket shelves are bare, people in self isolation, and universally people all are getting the same illness!

Toilet paper, paper towel, tissues, baby wipes, then it was the rice and pastas and tin food, then mince, now its medications that are being brought in bulk, or trying to be brought, as people all over the world panic about being put in lock down.

Supermarkets here have rationed items to 1 or 2 per customer. Well my hubby has sorted his priorities.

He likes a nip of bourbon in his can of coke with dinner each night so when I got home from work the other night, he wanted to go straight down to Uncle Dans ( Dan Murphys) the liquor supermarket and stock up on this weeks specials.

Now for someone who had surgery last week and isnt supposed to be drinking just yet hes planning ahead. I dont drink so I wont be helping him consume his purchases!

Well getting the mail out of our letter box is becoming quite an artform lately. With the wet weather weve had the past month especially the last week (nearly 200mm) the snakes are on the move and looking for dry spots to make their home.

A couple of weeks ago we found a small carpet python happily curled up in our letterbox. Hubby managed to get it out and relocate to the bushland at the back of us. Then Monday this week we were coming in the drive way and the fellow in the photo was on the fence just near the letterbox.

We disturbed it and it turned round and crawled into the letter box. Hubby went up a short time later to remove it but it had moved on. We believe it was a common green tree snake. The theory is that the snakes that can climb are not venomous, although they can bite and people can feel sick from the bite.

That said there have been reports lately that people have seen brown snakes in trees, and these are venomous……very venomous.

Last night I was about to walk out the front screen door and saw what I think was a coastal python and this morning we had a small eastern brown slither across the front patio, across the lawn and into the garden.

So getting the mail now means using a steel wire (that you hang pot plants off) that has a hook on the end, and using that to open the mail box.

Then with a long handled rubbish pickup tool, using that to grab the mail. I dont think Im ever putting my hand in that mailbox again!