In Memorium of a Badly Behaved Goanna

An early picture of teenage goanna

Today is a very sad day, and not just because another insect dive-bombed my mouth but this time didn’t come up (so, so, so disgusting!!). No, today I am in mourning (and not for the flying monster – he brought sudden death on himself). I am grieving for my beloved goanna. If you are a regular reader of my blog you will have read a post entitled Goannas Behaving Badly, whereby I described the laddish behaviour exhibited by our two resident goannas. The baby goanna poos everywhere and the elder one tries to mate every female in sight. They’re little scamps but they were my little scamps. OK, not quite mine but they did live in my house and I rather took to them. They were always able to raise a smile on my face. Well, apart from when I spot a rogue poo left behind by baby goanna, then it’s more like a grimace.


Having seen them every day, wriggling across the floor or playing out in the garden, I had come to think of them as pets and I always made sure I said hello to them. Then, yesterday morning, I was sitting at my computer in the dining room when I heard a kerfuffle outside, followed by a thwack as a large bird flew into the window. It’s not an unusual occurrence for birds to face-plant our windows – I don’t know whether the heat affects their brains but it happens more often than you’d think – but from the glimpse I got this seemed like a bigger bird than usual. So, armed with my Field Guide to Australian Birds, I looked out through the patio doors and saw the bird perched on one of our chairs. It looked like an overgrown magpie with a long, thin beak and I am still not sure exactly what it was as before I could consult my book I noticed something peeking out of its beak. It appeared to be a bit of straggly grass but it was moving. The bird noticed me then and flew down onto the grass, turning its head so I could see what was poking out of the other side of its beak. By now you’ve probably guessed that that bit of grass was in fact teenage goanna’s tail and from this new perspective I could clearly see its head, rendered immobile by the powerful grip of the bird’s beak. I gasped in shock. How could this be? How could a goanna go from being a naughty, lively, lusty teenager to being trapped in a death grip within minutes? The bird then flew up onto the fence, goanna still gripped tightly in its beak, but I could see that the goanna was now no longer moving. He was dead.

The world is a brutal place – it is dangerous out there. Poor teenage goanna was in the prime of his life when it was cruelly snatched from him by an evil, ugly giant magpie thing. At least he had his fun while he was alive and I certainly do not begrudge his romp with the female goanna the other week now. Perhaps this is a lesson to us all – enjoy life while you can as you never know when you will be swooped upon by a monster bird and clamped to death. RIP teenage goanna.