Yuck!

Here's a funny story!

Living in Australia means living in a country with a few of the worlds most deadly animals. We often get asked if we are never scared as we go camping a lot. Till recently I hardly ever got scared. That's not because I'm very brave, but we hardly came in contact with any nasty bastards. We've seen a few spiders that made us feel a bit uncomfortable at camp spots. Even a snake crossed our path ones our twice. But we never felt threatened so far.

This was all before my panic attack. Hehe, and this is were I completely freaked out!

In Tasmania Sander and I wanted to go for a short walk to a waterfall. On the sign at the beginning of the walk we read the usual information about the highlights and the flora and fauna along the walk. All fine, till Sander read out loud; 'during moist weather, leeches may occur'. 'LEECHES'!!! I yelled... 'I'm not coming'! Ow, I hate leeches, ticks and everything else that likes digging holes in my skin! No way I was coming along.
But I could see Sander was a bit disappointed. And hey, there were other people coming back from the walk and they looked perfectly fine.

So I changed my shorts for a pair of jeans and my flip flops for my hiking boots. Ready to go (kind of...I guess).

It was a nice walk and I could hear we were getting close to the waterfall when Sander stopped to have a closer look at the little creek we were crossing. I waited patiently until....there it was!!! On my jeans, halfway up my leg I came eye in eye (well eye in non-existing eye) with my biggest fear.... 'LEECHES!!!' I screamed.

I flicked my finger to get the horrible, creepy creature of my leg and that's when it got stuck on my finger. 'IIIEEEE!! all I could see was that slimy worm hanging on to my finger whilst I was jumping and screaming, and smashing my arm up and down.

I think it didn't manage to hang on any longer ten a split second, but I couldn't stop jumping and screaming. Yuck!

Sander managed to calm me down for (I think) half a minute. That was the moment that I bend down to check my legs underneath my jeans. Guess what... an even bigger leech was making its way up my leg to find itself a good spot to settle down. This is were I completely freaked out! I managed to smack the filty bastard of my leg and I ran for my life! I ran, and ran and ran, meanwhile crying like a lunatic. I could hear Sander behind me 'Monique, calm down, wait a second...' But there was no way I was stopping.

Running like a Tasmanian devil and squeaking like an hyena I managed to reach the park spot were I forced Sander to check every inch of my legs, my trousers, and all my other clothes.

Afterwards I'm very glad we had the park spot to ourselves. Imagine what we looked like. Me in my undies, jeans on my heels, crying like crazy and Sander on his knees checking my legs. Hilarious!!!

Anyway, I guess I'm not really afraid (yet) of 'deadly' animals but there are definitely animals that scare me...hehe. I'm just hoping it won't affect me to much on future walks!

Something completely different now. I have been asked to make a name plaque again. Sanders cousin and his wife got a (apparently very cute and roguish) little boy called Ties (Yep, just like my nephew).
So I chose to make a name plaque for little Ties with a Dutch theme, and this is what I came up with! Sanders parents brought the present from Melbourne to The Netherlands themselves!

Congratulations from Sander and me!