Goannas Behaving Badly

We have a resident goanna. In fact, we have two. There is a baby lizard who likes to pop up via the drain in the floor of our bathroom and a teenager who lives outside in the garden. The baby has scared me a few times as when he moves (I have no idea whether it’s a he or a she – how do you tell with lizards? – but its recklessly daredevil antics strike me as being very male characteristics), he resembles a snake speedily slithering along, his tiny legs hidden beneath his body. Although his favourite point of entry is the drain, through which he squeezes himself up ones of the grate holes, I caught him with his face poking up through the plug hole in the bathroom sink yesterday. Just his face. He was completely motionless and utterly unperturbed by the torrent of water crashing down onto him from the tap. How he managed to hold on throughout that ordeal I have no idea, but he seemed to simply be proving a point as, as soon as I turned the tap off, he disappeared. Definitely a boy. Oh, and he leaves tiny lizard poos in the bathroom (but unfortunately not in the toilet) and doesn’t clean up after himself. Like I said, definitely a boy.


The teenage goanna resembles a dinosaur more than a snake as whenever he is frightened or feels threatened he jumps up onto his hind legs and sprints off. It is the weirdest thing to watch, like bearing witness to some prehistoric activity. He wasn’t alone on Saturday but I couldn’t work out whether the other goanna was a love interest he was attempting to pounce on or an enemy that needed scaring off. He constantly chased after it, unable at first to catch it. When he finally did, I realised that it was probably a member of the opposite sex as my goanna jumped on the other, rolling about on the ground and then lay motionlessly entwined for at least a couple of minutes before separating and skulking off. “I’ll call you,” was probably the last thing he said to her. I’m rather ashamed of my goanna for his cowardly behaviour. I hope the baby goanna didn’t see it – that’s not the kind of behaviour that should be encouraged. Although, with his messiness and stubbornness, perhaps it is inevitable that he will end up that way. It must be a male thing.