h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Essentially there is nothing you can do to get rid of them. They are a protected species and, in any case, we are not a gun rich town. Bows and arrows are hit and miss. I wouldn't want to get close enough to try an knife.

The local government authority will lend you a possum trap ($50 deposit) but you can only take them a few hundred meters away from your house. They are extremely territorial and will come back. We thought we had removed all ingress/egree points until we saw one climbing vertically up the side of the house (asbestos sheeting).

But they really do look very cute.

I'm not sure cute would solve the "in my house" problem. Surely the local animal control has a better solution than a live trap with minimal relocation? I suppose the theory is that during the time it takes the cute little guys to bee-line it back to your house, you will have had time to seal up any openings.

There are protected species that can be pests here (wolves and black bears come immediately to mind). Our protected species tend to be more dangerous (I think) than possums. Our Department of Natural Resources will exterminate problem animals but they have to become dangerous to humans before that decision is made. Until then the DMR traps and transports.

My parents had a problem black bear that broke into their garage. The DNR trapped the bear and moved it 400 miles west. By the next summer it was back in its old neighborhood. (Someone actually read its eartag through a window. I don't think I'd be willing to get that close.)

Well I hope a workable solution presents itself soon.

As soon as:

a) the bank approves the load; and
b) the builders give us the "final" plans

we are going to know the existing house down and put up a new one.

An extreme solution maybe, but it may just work.

Oooh Congratulations. New home building is quite fun. We built our house 6 years ago and are all suffering the "builder's itch" to do it again. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we are on a truly extrordinary piece of land that we could not easily or inexpensively match. I think we'll be at our current home for as long as we live in this area. -- Unless some absolutely fantastic property with lots of acreage comes available at a do-able price. Unlikely.

Are you planning to work through a contractor that does everything for you? Or are you going to obtain your own permits and arrange your own inspections? (I assume that you have to do both those things.) Are you thinking of a dream home or are you in "good investment" mode?

Around here it is pretty unusual that someone tears down an existing structure to build a new one. It is happening more but, at least here, it usually means that you have really good land that you can't replace easily. Is that the case for you as well?
Obviously Curious

If you look at www.rivergumhomes.com.au and especially at the silkyoak 161 you can get an idea of what we are trying to buy. We have heavily modified it - hopefully it will be possum proof.

It has come to the point where the possums sound as if they are about to come in through the ceiling every night (they are nocturnal). I lie in bed wondering how surpised, smelly (and unhappy) a possum would be if it found itself falling into my bed.

I really like the flat roof-style from the city homes page (probably because we can't build leak-free flat roof houses that require a minimal amount of maintenance here so it would be unique). Those were very cool looking.

I didn't see the Silky Oak 161 but I found the 160. It looks like you're planning a few kids. The verandas are nice. Its a shame that few new homes here are build with verandas anymore. Verandas encourage visitors and lazy afternoons. The blue and white color scheme is very popular on the US east coast. Here, in the rural areas, people tend to fall into two camps -the invisible house group that uses a lot of earth tones, and the "Look Ma! I bought a great big huge house and want the world to see it" group that uses white or yellow. Even the Look Mas don't use primary color contrasting trim. That is just too east coast for us modest midwesterners. City people build whatever their subdivision covenants require. Only those homes built before appearance rules have the luxury of looking unique. In Madison we have a few homes built by Frank Lloyd Wright. They are cool.

I have this personal peeve about houses that have a garage door facing the main entrance to the property. (The Deacon was pretty good from the angle the shot was taken.) I think a property should be about the flow of land and landscaping into the home with all of it telling a story about its inhabitants. Garage doors say, "Yes I have a car and I'm too lazy to drive around the house to put it away." Besides, why would you have a garage if you don't have a car?

It looks like, from the other Silky Oak designs, that yours doesn't have a garage. That makes sense to me.

From the photos it looks like it never rains in Adelaide. After our soggy summer that sounds like eden.

So possums are smelly? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to meet one - particularly after it had fallen through my ceiling. They are cute though...

Speaking of in bed at night, one of the homes Gordy and Sue had before I was born was an old Sears Catalog house. It had push button light switches and just a lot of cool old things. It also had bats in the ceiling and walls. Did you know that bats are the only creature other than humans that mate while not in estrus? Gordy and Sue learned that while researching how to get the incredible noisy, nocturnal critturs out.

I believe that possums are always in estrus. This is not a fact, merely an observation.

Maybe they're just talking...

You are quite right - possums do talk. They are very social critters. They talk loudly and as if accross long distances. They talk before fighting, after fighting and during fighting. They talk before sex, after sex and during sex. Since we removed all of the overhanging branches etc (to stop them getting into the roof), we have discovered they quite like talking while climbing the vertical walls of the house.

But to ease up a bit on the possum thing, it does rain relatively infrequently here. In fact it rains here less than nearly anywhere else - I think we average about 72inches/year which is not a lot really (that is, three feet sounds like a lot if it falls all at once, but it is much less over 12 months). This doesn't quite put us into no-maintanence flat roof territory but we don't have soggy summers either.

We have chosen the house to maximise rentability since we want to go overseas as soon as we can organise a PhD scholarship (not for me). Given it is next to a Uni, Hospital and 18 mins by train from the city centre, we have built it to be eminantly rentable to 'nice' people.

One of our pet peeves is the house which welcomes the car before the owner. That is where there is a great big garrage door capable of taking two cars driving in and out AT THE SAME TIME, and a tiny 3 foot wide door for people to slip in through. Whos house is it anyway? I am glad that we are not alone in observing this.

So yes, the house is built for chilun, though not ours, and not for a car. It is our one compromise for ethics over rental pragmitism.



PS: I am writing my posts from a PC using IE. It don't do right click spell checking and it's yucky. However, all hail chairman Bill.

Overseas? Where are you hoping to go? Is Adrianne (is that right?) looking for US opportunities? (Or are you just trying to escape the possums. "Look, the renters will never notice and besides, we'll be long gone. The management company will have to take care of it then.")

We have a garage that allows two cars to park at the same time (assuming very skilled drivers) but it is at the back and not the place where people are welcomed. The trend now is to have a garage that allows 3 cars to park. In the country it is 3 cars minimum plus an out-building that can hold several more. When we tried to sell our home a few years ago the negative comments we received were:
Too small (1800 square feet plus an unfinished basement of 750 additional - now finished)
No master suite (yes, 3 bedrooms and 3 full baths - not nearly enough for the US average family of 4)
Only a 2 car garage - and at the back!

And there you have it. We actually had someone comment that they would never have built so small a home on such amazing property. When we ended up deciding to pursue my career (rather than Gordy & Sue's) we took our house off the market. What a relief. Selling a house is nasty business.

What do you mean "not your chilun"? You said that you hoped to have them someday.

I ran the conversions:
house 168 sq meters (on 2 floors)
basement 70 sq meters

Is that little by Australian standards? It seems so comfortable to me. I'm struck by our conspicuous consumption.

Our house will end up being about the same size. It is going to be far to big for us, but probably about right to maximise our chances of renting. We are in a ruralish, hilly spot 15 minutes from the city by train and 5 minutes from Flinders University, a hospital and some other largish organisations. I doubt if such a place exists in many largish cities anywhere in the world (Adelaide is about 1 million people).

In other words, if we build an exective-style home, we should get our money back. Our goal is to live overseas!

If we were to have built for ourselves, we would have tried for about 120m2 + cellar.

I am not sure what the rural U.S. method of pest elimination is but I suspect that it may be illegal round here. We did try the trick of the open door with a clear invitation to leave. We also told them that because of there ill ways, the roof would open, the walls would collapse and there would be great smokes and destruction.

And there was.

The new house, built on the site of the old one is both possumless and going to be ours as of 5:30pm tomorrow evening.

A note to the wise, if you post to an ancient discussion don't get excited by the last post on the first page. Your answer will bear no resemblence to the second to last post on the last page which will be the post preceding your new one.

Or something.

I'm flying out to Dallas tomorrow morning so I thought I'd waste time (instead of doing what needd to be done) and check out the H2G2. I had a great laugh at this post. Thank you.

Congratulations on moving in to your new possum-less home. I hope you enjoy it greatly.

So back to a year old post... Where overseas?

At this point it is between Cambridge and the University of London (King's College). Cambridge would be a much nicer place to live. London would be central (in a global sense as well) but very, very, very expensive. Outragously expensive. I can live in Adelaide for a month for the cost of central London rent alone (well I could before my new mortage kicked in).

So it seems we might get a few months in our new house before we have to move again. At least it is an exciting move. I also get unrestricted working rights in the UK which will make life easier to afford.



PS: I hope you meet some cowboys while you are in Dallas.

PPS: Do you get to wear a silly hat. I have a puss-in-boots image in mind from Shreck II (which I haven't seen).

Ah, no. Alas, no hats or boots for the hard-working Hermkitty. I did find a nice leather goods store and managed to completely embarass myself by asking the price of a $8,000 aligator-skin bag (or was it ostritch?). It was cool-looking but definitely not in a million years that cool. (Besides the cat in Shrek 2 was a tom and not very well-behaved. If that had been a cat movie it would have rated an R at least.)

The other really fun thing I did whilst in Dallas was visited the Dallas Museum Mayan exhibit. (If you're interested you can google Dallas Museum of Art. It is the header graphic right now and will be on show until May 7th.) I was amazed at the quality of artifacts as well as the quantity. I guess I'm use to exhibits more along the lines of mouldy old barely distinguishable items where you think, "I guess that could have been an eating utensil. I can imagine it if I squint and tilt my head to the side." These were vibrantly colored with very few chips or missing pieces. Also, the legends surrounding Mayan art are really fantastic (as in fantasy-fantastic).

Congratulations on the unrestricted working rights in the UK. I've heard that they are not so easy for Americans to obtain. Cats have it particularly rough traveling to England. They have a 6-month quarantine. I can't imagine what I would do without my pets for so long.

I've heard London is expensive but never traveled there. What does a month's rent cost for a moderate 2-bedroom apartment? I'm curious how it compares to lil' ole Madison.

Cowboys in Dallas... Well, I drove past the football stadium for the Dallas Cowboys while I was there but never saw hide nor hair of a genuine cowboy. I think they tend to avoid the big city. I did stay in the Adolphus hotel where, once upon a time, very rich ranchers stayed.

The Dallas Museum website is definitely worth studying - I will have to spend some time over it (maybe after hours).

As for the Aligator skin bag - however much it would cost you, it cost the aligator a lot more. Personally, I would struggle to justify that much money to acquire something merely to hold my fur brush.

I don't actually have these working rights yet - when Ali gets her student visa, then I get an accompanying spouse visa which has the working rights. At this point we don't have a letter from the Vice-Chancellor of the University of London saying 'Welcome' and until that arrives we can't apply for Visas. When we get there we will be able to afford a modest two bedroom appartment for about the same price as a new Dallas Handbag every month, i.e. about 500 pounds/month. Clearly one can spend less money (or a lot more) but central London rents are much higher than where I live now. US people are included as the same categories as Australians so if Gordy were to go to England to study, you would be eligable as an accompanying cat (notwithstanding the quarantine rules) to work hard doing cat things.

When we visited London last year it was about three times more expensive than central Paris and a lot more expensive than Barcellona or Manchester. The coffee is excerable (universally) and 2-3 pounds a cup - we were hesitant to pour it down the street drains in case the fish in the river accidently tasted it. There is no such thing as bad coffee in Barcellona.

Live somewhere with bad coffee? I'm not sure it is worth it. Was it too weak or too strong? I haven't met a too strong cup of coffee yet but I'm sure they exist somewhere.

Yeah, I felt a little bad for the alligator (or ostrich) too. Cows donate their hide when they're slaughtered for meat but alligators are not typically considered a dining option. Ostrich is, though. Hmmm. Anyway, $8,000 is too much money for pretty much anything in my book -- except maybe a house or car.

It has been a while since I posted. Have you had any news on moving? I converted the 500 pounds into US dollars -- about $930. That would be a pretty decent apartment here. Probably about a two bedroom, 1000 sq feet, in a good part of town.

I actually got the flat prices wrong. The cost of a two bedroom apartment/flat is 350-500 pounds per week - not per month. They do come cheaper but you do have to compromise (i.e. take chance your of being beaten up in the street, share a kitchen with other tenents, or don't see any sunlight from any of the windows ever etc - not that you would move from Adelaide to London if you soley wanted to catch more gammas).

It looks as if November will be the earliest we can go. The Kings College London wants the existing academic work to be completed (that is, submitted, externally recommended and the academic transcript endorsed). Given the difficulties in getting two external examiners to mark a 60,000 word thesis quickly, that will take time... Then we have to apply for visas!

And we also have to develop a robust coffee acquisition strategy.



PS: I liked the poetry at Spook's.