Cleveland in Piccies

I got the biggest shock this morning. I was finally raking up the gigantic collection of leaves from the backyard after all this cold weather and wind howling through the past few weeks and I had a couple of impressive piles happening, and I was just raking away and I didn’t even notice it at first.
Then, out the corner of my eye, I saw the reddish/orange fur. “Shit!” I exclaimed when it occurred to me what it was.
A baby possum.

It scared me because it was so freshly deceased. It had no noticeable marks on it, no injuries that I could see. Ants hadn’t even started attacking it yet. So this had either just happened or maybe happened a few hours earlier, and I was just left confused as to what caused it.

So I spent the next 15 minutes trying to move the damn thing without touching it, failing with trying to lift it with the rake. Eventually I got it and, well I didn’t really know what to do with it, so I just threw it out of the yard over into the back area. The ants can take care of it further away from the house. Or another animal. I dunno.

I had to wonder if my housemate’s cat had gotten outside last night somehow. She’s quite a timid, scaredy-cat most of the time, but she doesn’t like the neighbour’s cat at all and hisses through the glass if ever she sees him. Could she have escaped from the house and killed this poor little possum?
I’m still rather confused about it.
At least the yard finally looks good. I spent forever getting leaves out of that damn bottom pond. I used the net to get them out because it had become quite swampy, so I’ve left the pump on all day to try and aerate it a little. I accidentally got a hold of a fish in the net on one attempt and I think I scared the crap out of it haha, so put it straight back in the pond. Good to know they are still thriving in there, somehow. God it was a mess.
I think it’s slightly better now, better than it was anyway.

I didn’t just hang around the house today either. I randomly decided that I hadn’t been to Cleveland in years, so I looked up when the next train was, and wondered down and jumped on the train.

It was a nice trip until about Morningside, when a bunch of straight guys got on the train and were chatting back and forth to each other about how long they’d been out on bail.
I was reallllly wishing I’d been smarter and thought to bring my headphones.

Then one of them got off at around Wynnum, wheras the ‘more thug’ one stayed on, but he went to sleep so that was all good lol.
But THEN, there were a group of girls up the end of the carriage who had been snapping pictures for pretty much the entire trip. I kept hearing that “CLICK” sound that Iphone’s make when taking a picture and I had no idea if they were just taking a million selfies or if they were taking photos of other commuters or what.
But it was their conversation that alarmed me. One of them goes, “Oh-muh-gawd! I am so excited to see Emily get bashed tonight.”
The other girls laughed and agreed with said comment.
They were clearly high-school aged, probably skipping school as it was only around 1:30pm by that stage. I dunno if it’s school holidays or not. They weren’t in any uniform.
So that’s great, knowing these girls were off to some scrag-bitch fight later that evening.

I made a Facebook status, confused about what the fuck was wrong with the world. I was used to this shit on the Caboolture or the Ipswich lines, but I thought the East-siders were a little more classy.
Apparently not!

Anyway, so Cleveland was actually really nice, so that was a surprise. I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting. All the stations beforehand looked pretty ordinary, except maybe Wynnum Central. I just wandered around a lot. Some charity workers tried to talk to me, but they are my ultimate pet peeves. I hate them more than I do religious Evangelicals.
“…Just a moment of your…“ “NO thank-you!”

Ergh. ERGH. Hate them. They are on every fucking street corner in the city and I live in it so it’s hard to avoid them, but even on my trip to the burbs, IN a shopping centre, they were there. I know they are just doing their jobs, but FUCK, so fucking annoying! This article made me laugh during the week.

I took a few random snaps. Figured why not. I had traveled an hour each way on the train.

Trust me to run into this sign… lol

The trip back home seemed a lot faster, but I guess I wasn’t as intimidated by sharing the carriage with criminals :P

Tiger was being very cute tonight for some reason. Normally she just does her own thing but tonight she was jumping up on the couch and snuggling up against me. Maybe she had killed the possum and was trying to figure out a way to do the same to me?
Cat’s are such strange creatures. She’s normally terrified of me, but not tonight. I even got a meow out of her. Alex was home too, just upstairs so I don’t think she wanted food. I did close the window though because I think she was eyeing it off, wanting to escape the confines of the house, again.