This critter crawled out from under our fridge. I was pretty scared of him at first, but at that point I had him mistaken for a huge fly (I’ve seen ‘em this size in the South Island). He’s not a fly.

video of our lovely specimen

Fired the pics off to my auntie (an entomologist with hortresearch), she asked Jo Berry (Aotearoa’s hymenoptera expert), who told us it’s a spider-hunting wasp, and we should set him free and let the spiders take their chances.

Best of luck to them all, I say!

Update: Te Ara calls this wasp a “Large Black Hunter”. Cool!
[…]

the winner for this week’s “bestest and most pointless nag message” goes to … the industry leader in pointless nag messages.

[…]

Meet Hunter!

After three days of first-stage labour for Saira, Hunter was born at our home in Opanuku Road, surrounded by native bush and birds.

Being able to have the birth at home was an amazing and moving experience that we’re lucky to have shared. Thanks SO MUCH to our midwives Karen Bettley and Chris Hamilton. We’re deeply grateful for their efforts and commitment in spending so much time to ensure our birth was a natural and beautiful one.

Thanks also to Helen (Grandma) Lal, who stayed with us and gave her love and support throughout the process. And to Henry and Leanne for the super-cool Uglydoll (in background of pic above), to Jacqui (Nana?) for the beautiful flowers, and to Interflora for their quick delivery and valiant attempts to climb our driveway in their van.

Hunter is a Libra, weighed 7lb (3.2kg) at birth, and was born at 9.24am on Saturday, 29 September, in the year of the Fire Boar 2007. He has super cool sideburns.

Love to yas all from Hunter, Chris and Saira! […]

no not that day though :) […]

i’ve been checking out google maps versus yahoo! maps, evaluating the best nz coverage

google gets cred for a hot flight sim built into google earth and for not lying to dutch tourists about opanuku road joining up with scenic drive. when dutch tourists are deceived, they end up breaking their rental cars on the bullbars of my clunkery old diesel, and that sux. -10000 points to some nz mapping providers for their mapping badness.

but today we’re looking at yahoo!, who are predicting (note contrast between coastline in satellite pic and inlay) either severe global warming, or a catastrophic dambreak at the huia dam

what else have we learned from the mapping madness?

yahoo has ok pics, but responds to requests for specific nz addresses with “do you mean waitakere, or waitakere?” then it sends you to waitakere township either way
yahoo has lots of black areas across nz, and pretty much no street map … maybe this whole yahoo!xtra thing will change that … but would you trust xtra for directions to the corner store?
any mapping provider gives better results than nz posts postcode finder, which still insists that piha doesn’t exist, try paihia. i cannot find a single piha road that nz post know about. such a pity, given what a nice chap the postie is …
google maps are pretty damn good so far!
[…]

by corn

[…]

qrty […]

here are a couple of links […]

i’m building this at the moment, so don’t expect it to work just yet :) […]

If a human pulled this, s/he’d SO get locked up in a moment. Picture this:
Guy visits 25 patients, spends a couple of hours with them. 100% fatality rate.
Think he’s going to be winning internet fame for his contribution to society? Perhaps a wall plaque for his “compassionate hospice care” to hang over his extra saucer of milk?

Well, George the (Killer) Cat does exactly the same thing, and is applauded for being cute while doing it. At least it doesn’t look like he beat up on the teddy for too long before sending him to the other side.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/25/national/a141306D42.DTL&tsp=1

Foolish humans. Don’t you know what they’re planning?

Cat grows plump on human souls, and we write interest stories. […]