Goanna & Co

Young Harley saw his first 'dragon' today. It was just after lunch when, liberated at last from his highchair, he was on the verandah just in time to see our big goanna hanging upside down from a young swamp mahogany (E. robusta) and spewing a cascade of sand from his snout.

Harles, now 18 months old and as quick-witted as he's lightfooted, was visiting with his mum, who called out in alarm "Mum, come outside, quick! There's this huge snake...!" Gianna had only a passing acquaintance with serpents, it seems. On the other hand, she's an authority on invading cane toads :-)

Why was the big goanna spewing sand, you might reasonably ask. Well, our wilful goose Monica had started laying eggs at the foot of the swamp mahogany, one every second day, and Bianca had so far emptied three of them and substituted sand for the original contents (which we ate in omelettes and cakes so we could sell more of our free-range hens' eggs).

The goanna had made straight for Monica's nest, not going on to the henhouse where he might have lunched on nine hens' eggs - perhaps he remembered the goose nest from previous years, perhaps he just stumbled across it first on his first outing this spring.

He grabbed a first egg, which cracked in the vice of his jaws, spilling the sand before he noticed.
Bianca seized him by the tail, and he swung left and right to free himself. Bianca released his tail, so he went for a second egg, but by this time Bianca was chasing him with a water pistol we bought for just such encounters. Egg number two cracked and spilled its sand on the ground. Undeterred, Goanna turned to swipe the third egg and raced up the tree, quickly getting out of reach of Bianca's jet.

Gianna asked if Goanna might get sick from this novel diet, but we assured her the sand would pass through the metre-long reptile without ill effects, much like the half a dozen golfballs he'd swallowed in the henhouse in earlier years and deposited hundreds of metres away in the bush.

It was during this theoretical discussion that Goanna turned on the trunk - and an impressive stream of sand issued from his jaws. Harley was spellbound... and so were we!

Heron overdose

Having to go home on the empty school bus at three, Harley missed the other current spectacle in our little wildlife sanctuary. An elegant, slim white-cheeked heron had observed my efforts to clean out the little pond outside the kitchen now that it had almost dried up in a rain-deficient winter. When I stopped dredging buckets of algae-covered mud and restoring slipping retaining walls of bush stones yesterday in late afternoon, the heron swooped in, to great shrieks of alarm from the chickens, and began methodically fishing for yabbies and the like.

He would shake one foot daintily in the water, in a sort of tickling motion, then spear the fleeing prey with a swift fencing stroke a fraction of a second later. He continued in this fashion for about two hours, when I intervened, calling out "Leave some for tomorrow, mate!".

More shrieks from the chickens and he was gone.

Apparently, my advice was heeded (a rare occurence these days, if ever): the heron was back at work till dusk today and we watched him from the kitchen table while sipping on a glass of no-name 2003 Clare Valley Merlot (Bianca) and 2004 Ingoldby Clare Valley Chardonnay (yours truly).

Such are the simple pleasures of Philemon and Baucis in this day and age...

(I won't bore you with notes on 'Net security hassles, potential credit card 'abuse' by merchants requiring such details even when registering you for a month-long free sampling of mp3 files for your new player, suspected virus infections on machines that are supposed to be guarded by firewalls and AV software, and other joys of this day and age...)

Take care!