There are thirteen (13) bees in my bathroom. I counted.

And I just realised that I've sprayed my toothbrush with insecticide.

My kettle has become some sort of ants' graveyard. It's where they go to die. Horribly. I don't really get why they aren't going for bread crumbs or checking out the water in the sink. Possibly because such activities aren't lethal.

Whatever. I drink the water that killed them anyway.

"Lions, and tigers dragons, and bears lettuce, oh my!"

When hunting for lions, there is absolutely no point in locating one, and attempting to get closer, as that is the same tactic being used by the hundred or so people around you. Instead, it is advisable for the hunter to find a restaurant that still has a string of fire crackers and lettuce on offer, find a comfy wall to lean on, and wait for the lion to come to you.



Some call this lazy, I call this efficient convervation of energy. Also, it works. Not to mention you get a prime viewing position, which is important when your short and the world is full of tall people.

Lions are quite hard to photograph, what with all the leaping about, yet ever so pretty.





YES. THAT IS NEO IN THE LION'S MOUTH. THE ONE ISN'T SO TOUGH AGAINST DANCING LIONS. BOOYAH.



Lions are messy eaters. For srs. Take note, other hunters, that if you're going to stand right by the firecrackers when they go off, bring ear plugs.

Lettuce and oranges are standard fare when it comes to feeding lions. Beer cans, though? They're new to me. It wasn't an isolated event either, I saw multiple lions going through various cans of beer. They went through the same motions of eating; tossing the item in the air, making a great show of devouring it, and then hurling it out over the crowd.

When a little girl on her dad's shoulders nearly caught a can in the face, I kinda cackled a bit.

I was blocked by lions when Dai Loong finally came out, magnificent beast that he is. It took a minute or so for the length of his body to emerge from the alley, and he turned up Little Bourke Street and onto Exhibition, and disappeared. I figured hunting dragons isn't all that different to hunting lions, and parked myself at said alley (at the end of which is the Chinese Australian Museum, Dai Loong's home), to await his return.

Damn, I'm a good hunter.

They had to reverse park him back into the museum. Yes. The dragon did a three point turn.



I had a great view. This guy is so big, his body is made of, I don't know...train cabooses.

They parked him briefly, to give the handlers a rest and give the crowd a photo opportunity. Lions appeared all over the place, and made a great show of standing tall. Seeing the actual dancers close up revealed how utterly wrecked they were, from all the leaping, cavorting, and lifting people up to stand on their shoulders. Couldn't move for bright colours.



DAI LOONG'S HEAD



IS ENORMOUS.



It took about twelve big burly men to get it off the ground. He slunk back into his museum home, and I, having had a successful day's hunting, retired. Attempted to retire. Crowds, man, they kinda get in the way. The whole city smelt of greasy chinese dumplings, incense and firecrackers. I crave yum cha like you wouldn't believe.

It's round this time of year I wish I was either 100% chinese or 100% not chinese. Never can figure out where I fit in all this.

Me, Great What Hunter?

Part II

There was a giant roach beside my bed. Giant. Fucking huge. The size of my arm, I tell you. I exaggerate. The size of my thumb. Which is huge. Giant, I tell you.

I didn't want a repeat ordeal of roach guts smeared into the carpet, which mean avoiding having to make any spectacular lunges across the room, which meant making sure it wasn't going to run. To do this, I built a wall of toilet paper around it. Then, with another wad of toilet paper in hand, I stood over it, ready to smite the little enormous bugger.

My brain froze.

Beingsillybeingsilly. Roaches aren't poisonous, and they don't charge at you furiously like some spiders do, but AUGH! I freaked out anyway, not unlike Mulder and his girly scream in that episode of the X-Files with Baaaambi.

And then I smote it.

It turned out with was just a husk anyway. Which I nevertheless took great pleasure in flushing down the toilet.

Part III

I could hear it. I COULD HEAR IT. It was bumping around the boxes stacked by the window, and it sounded ENORMOUS. AND IT WAS ENORMOUS. AND IT WAS RUNNING AROUND. The nerve of these creatures! Very well, if that's the way it wants to play, then ninja-fast smushing on the carpet it would be. Armed with toilet paper, again, I set on luring out where I could crush it.

Holy. Fuck. I think it broke the sound barrier. Did you hear a sonic boom as it just zoooooomed straight by me? I did. It dashed to my chair and disappeared.

How does a roach that big just disappear? I kicked the chair. I turned the chair over and poked it. The roach was gone. Vanished. Poof.

I was writing. I'm a sensitive artist you know, and I was in the moment, and I simply can not work under these conditions! I ain't putting my bum on a chair in which a giant roach has hidden in!

Disgruntled, I packed up and went to bed.

AND FOUND THE GIANT ROACH IN THE SHOWER.

It moved so fast I didn't even see it get that far. That's alarming. But it had made a tactical error in its retreat, as it couldn't get out of the shower, and I had no qualms about smushing its guts all over the tiles. And I did. And I took great pleasure in flushing it down the toilet, me, TRIUMPHANT.

AUGH! I'm used to possums. I'm used to mice. But not giant mutant alien super-sonic cockroaches. I'm going to buy some surface spray, right now, and turn my apartment into a seething toxic miasma where roaches fear to tread. Old roaches will hobble around telling the little ones not to go out onto the Charcoal Plains of Tessadom, those poisonous grounds will keeel you, I say, keeeel you, and then the great ogre Tessa will crush you, I say, crush you, and throw your remains in her great porcelain altar, and then pee on your corpse, I say.

Pee. On. Your. Corpse.

Me, Great White Hunter

Cockroaches are fast little devils, and when you don't have any insect spray, there's nothing else to do but hunt them across the bathroom tiles with a wad of toilet paper and ninja-fast reflexes. The trick is the manouver them into a corner, from which they cannot escape mushing.

The other trick is, not to let them get on the carpert, and then mush them, because roach guts are kinda...sticky.