Monitor Monster 29

It’s 29 degrees out at 29 past 12, on the 29th of the 9th, 2019.

I was sitting between a 2 m long adult goanna and the sunken bathtub it had come to drink at.

Bird-watching I hear dead grass crackling behind me. I turn, jumping when I see the monster. Its long tongue flickers; a reptilian head pulls back. There’s a pause while it watches. Time seems suspended before it changes direction. I sigh, grab the camera and shoot. The monitor bounds away, slipping into the garden.

Finches sound the alarm, fleeing their nesting tree.

They’re safe, I’m safe, we’re all safe.

Lucky I turned around when I did.

The reptile is longer than I am tall. Spotted legs, mottled markings and wrinkled leather skin cover a beast more deadly than most snakes.

Aggressive, a goanna mouth is pure poison. Carrion eaters and egg thieves, protein sticks between their teeth and rots. Swimming with bad bacteria, contact leads to infections that won’t heal.

Goannas are monitors who bite hard and tear flesh. Giant lizards who rake away skin with sharp claws and lash the tail which is the same length as their body. The use self-defence against all attackers, even humans.

Sitting down, I’m unsure if I didn’t want to provoke the big lizard, or was rooted to the spot in fear. I wouldn’t try to hurt a goanna, but it’s incredible how many competing thoughts and scenarios my brain came up with in the moments when the beast stared me down. Stupidly, I stared back.

My angry green-eyed: what do you think you are doing look.

I’m a school teacher. When kids engage in cruel power plays or do something very wrong, I give them my death stare.

Staying statue still, I focus on the culprit and they usually back down. Sometimes they beg me to stop looking at them before dropping the chair they were about to throw. It gives me time to figure out what to do next; never knowing how to react in violent situations.

Maybe that focus worked with the goanna. For a handful of seconds the monitor was heading straight to me. Covering the ground fast and tasting the air with its long tongue, it froze, lowered its jaw and fled.

The goanna startled me, it’s neck was blown up straight after our our eyes met, making it look larger and more foreboding.

Rushing inside, I hid from the monster behind brick walls, peering out through the windows.

I’ve seen these goannas twice before this spring. A fortnight ago one came to the old bath to drink while I hemmed my daughter’s jeans. Yesterday one came back to drink again. Our farmhouse has the only water source in a 2 km radius. In our 3rd year of devastating drought, every living thing needs access for survival.

The goanna photographed quickly from inside the house yesterday, through a door that was open a couple of inches.

Aiming the camera from behind a door isn’t the same sensation as being next to a full grown monitor.

Four weeks into spring and the weather is hot, but I give an involuntary shiver. As far as animals go a goanna is stunning, but reptiles this large creep me out.

I can’t quite trust anything that can climb up the bricks of our house in seconds, when we’re standing the other side of a glass door in shock. It unnerves me when they clamber about on our hot tin roof to warm themselves.

Goannas easily climb vertical tree trunks; they can climb up people too if they’re standing. And, if that germ drenched snout fails to get you, claws strong enough to rip open a cow just might.

Powerful bodies moving with speed and agility, they look like mini-dinosaurs.

A muscular beast running across the dead lawn at the front of our farm house in north west NSW Australia.

Scary stuff.

We caught a baby goanna in our house years ago. Less than a foot long, we put it in a fish tank with a lid; fed it meat, flies and insects.

Worst. Pet. Ever.

The kids named it Snappy. It was too-trying to bite us through the glass. Hissing, salivating, attacking-it was horrid.

The whole family went to free it. Snappy raced out and up a tree. A dangling tail was the last we saw of that little monster.

This great lizard was just as wary of me as I was of it.

Most monsters don’t get so close,

those that do are the monsters we have inside us:

depression

anxiety

angst

hate

fear.

My critical inner-monster reminding that nothing I do is ever good enough.

Not young enough or clever enough,

not thin enough, pretty enough or rich enough.

This monster harps on about me being inept and insufficient in so many ways.

Enough.

I can’t take a photo of it and it won’t slither into the garden if I stare it down, instead it skulks around in my skull eating away at self-esteem and happiness.

I’ve had at least 29 reincarnations of My Head Monster.

The 1st lived under my bed when I was 4. It threatened to get me when I ran to the bathroom at night.

What if I could slay this bastard creature?

Turn, act, grab the camera and zoom in.

Focus on how ridiculous monster number 29 is.

Turn on the flash light and shoot to kill…then live better.

Slay that beast with love,

sense,

truth,

wellness,

confidence,

awareness,

mindfulness,

and more love-

including self-love.

It should be easy, after all it’s no goanna.

Not a monster, just an animal trying to survive as best it can. All photos are my own.