#spiders are most active in summer and i live in australia so i'm sure you can connect the dots

[taradactyls]

The posts about the December solstice is so funny as someone who lives in the southern hemisphere. Everyone in the northern hemisphere talking about the winter solstice and finally getting more sunlight again and hoping to survive the dark winter months, wishing for snow, frolicking in the evergreen forests at midnight etc etc,

meanwhile, the vibe in half the southern hemisphere is 'the peak of summer approaches, you know what this means, lads...

'SPIDERS BE UPON YE'

[lostmind3]

Weirdly, that sounds a lot like my reaction to the overseas tourists in my home town. I'm from a rural town in NSW Australia that gets a lot of backpackers for fruit picking and it's amazing the little everyday knowledge stuff you take for granted that are actually necessary for survival:

1. Avoid the long grass in summer, check your boots before putting them on if you've left them outside overnight - surefire way to get bitten by a brown snake or a redback spider respectively if you don't.

2. Don't leave empty glass bottles lying around in the hot sun, how to properly light a match, what hazards to avoid when setting up a campfire (eg. No grass nearby, not under a tree, etc) - I remember doing activity sheets in kindergarten where we had to circle all the things in the picture that could start a bushfire. I was 5yrs old and I already knew this stuff, people.

3. Continued from number 2: what the fire rating signs (located on the outskirts of almost every town in NSW) mean so you know how likely a bushfire is to start, the different stages of a bushfire (i.e. grass fire, scrub fire, kangaroo hopping, etc) and how they behave, things like what trees to plant in your garden and where to place your compost to make your house safer if everything burns. Every year kids are taught to make sure they and their family have an evacuation plan in case of a sudden bushfire going out of control - keep in mind that the town I am from is surrounded by farmland not bush, the odds of requiring a full scale evacuation are practically non-existant.

4. What to do if you ever get lost in the bush. Mostly boils down to Stay Put So Other People Can Find You, but also involves things like how you're more likely to find water (and people) if you aim downhill, and horror stories of children who wandered into the bush and were never found again.

5. What to do if you are driving and see a kangaroo/wallaby on the side of the road, and to avoid driving in certain areas at dawn/dusk when they are more likely to be around.

6. Slip, slop, slap. i.e. Slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. Also stay in the shade and drink lots of water. The sun can kill, people, don't be stupid.

Most of this stuff (and heaps more, actually) I've known before I even started school, because it's necessary to teach kids this stuff so they don't die.

None of the backpackers know this stuff, so they come across as being the most stupid people on earth, when really it's just that I live in a really dangerous part of the world and think it's normal.

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.