Death Watch Beetle

Here is a photo of an old oak beam after being infested with death watch beetle. The beam is on an old building (still in use) in England which is about 5 or 600 years old. (Photo by me).

A Joke

I thought of a joke last week - all by myself.

Question: What do you call a spider in a thunderstorm?
Answer: A torrentula.
It's the type of joke you find in a Christmas cracker, but it's original.

A useful fact?

Apparently, hippo's kill more people in Africa than any other animals - lions, tigers, crocodiles, rhinos, etc. They are very territorial about their water space and tend to overturn boats.

Gold rush

To cut a long story short.....in the Australian gold rushes of the 1900's, the majority of the people who got rich were those that were selling equipment and services to the prospectors, relatively few prospectors got rich. This probably applies to other gold rushes in other parts of the world also. I discovered this fact a few years ago when I flew from Scotland to Australia and spent a month using a metal detector in the old mine workings - I found about $15 worth of gold.