Fierce Australian Creatures

With Claire and Georgia we visited Roma St Parklands for some toddler musicality, a train trip and some playground fun, before venturing out into the suburbs before the parking fees became unserviceable.

Out in Ashgrove we pitched up at a playground of previous experience and messed about a bit on the equipment, as I believe it's called by professional adult types these days, and were considering our options for further entertainment with an apoplexy of obnoxious bird-noise occuring in the huge trees overhead created by a corps of cacophanous cockatoos.

Next thing we knew there were a couple of thumps on the floor, and looking closely we espied a couple of little brown lumps lying, inert, where they had fallen. We surmised that these possumettes must have fallen from the tree; or we they in fact pushed by those evil cockies?

Suddenly one of them popped up its head and made a run for it, directly for me! I looked on in some amusement, thinking it would run in between my legs and into the wide blue yonder, to what fate nobody would know, but instead it saw me clearly as some sort of tree-like object and scurried up my leg, past my delicate underparts and up my jumper (thankfully the outside) before coming to rest on my bough-like outstretched arm, its claws sharp against my skin as it clung on grimly.

This of course was a hugely entertaining and dare I say momentous development but with steely Samaritanism I attempted to re-home the little, um, darling into its tree of origin whilst the others switched their attention to little lump number two, still inert on the ground.

This one we thought was a goner, but no! It hopped up as well and made straight for Lyra, and crawled up her sapling-like body. She took it in altogether worse humour than I had, and tried to bat the thing away, whereupon it sank it tiny but sharp teeth into her finger, before we managed to extricate the possum from the child and get it running up the tree again.

Much pratting around later, we ended up at the doctors as you do in such cases where the fear of something dreadful happening, no matter how unlikely, outsmarts common sense, where Doctor Tom dripped a drop of Betadine onto the finger and gave Lyra a jellybean - an experience she may never forget.