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A Garden Visitor

Sandgroper

Sandgroper

One of the 4 or 5 that live around here. We have Mum who is about 1.2 meters long, big bro about 1 meter from last years litter(or whatever you call their batches) and 3 about this size, about 650mm-750mm long from this years batch. These were about 6"(150mm) long when we first seen them at the beginning of spring so they have grown pretty fast. I saw one when they were about that size swallow a whole frog sideways in about 30 seconds. They also eat bugs, mice, baby snakes(and bigger snakes as they get bigger) and the buggers love strawberries but I have yet to see one eat a chilli. They scare the crap outta ya though when they come rustling through the bush coz they look like a snake at first glance.
This is Fair Dinkum, true, not bullshit.
You have to be careful when you scare one because they are tree dwellers and they will use you to get up a tree and out of harms way and those claws are not for decoration.
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Stuff this for a game of soldiers,I'm Outta Here.
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They can get up to about 6 to 8 foot and 150+lbs. After a while the seem to stop growing longer and start to get fatter.
 
when you first posted a goanna i had to google it, to understand exactly what you were dealing with, we don't get lizards here(that's not completely true but i have never seen one, i think in some regions there are skinks but they are small).... we have various turtles but they don't get that large.

goannas it appears can be very.....instinctive to their nature....meaning they are a small brained carnivor and chasing something down and eating it, is what it seems to be one of its favourite past times... kind of like "eat, drink and be merry", that's all they have to live for.

wonder if they would tackle a rabbit? or how about some neighbour's stray rogue cats that like to crap in my flower beds every spring.

let see, what would be the most ferocious thing in my garden, besides me, ladybugs or perhaps a dragonfly, magpies can get pretty agressive(i remember 1 year when i was cleaning out my composter, i interupted a nest of mice and they dashed, they didn't get far as the magpies swooped in and ate them. wasps, they can get aggressive and like to stop in and drink from my birdbath and snack on my wooden fence.

.........nice pictures.
 
Burning Colon said:
when you first posted a goanna i had to google it, to understand exactly what you were dealing with, we don't get lizards here(that's not completely true but i have never seen one, i think in some regions there are skinks but they are small).... we have various turtles but they don't get that large.

goannas it appears can be very.....instinctive to their nature....meaning they are a small brained carnivor and chasing something down and eating it, is what it seems to be one of its favourite past times... kind of like "eat, drink and be merry", that's all they have to live for.

wonder if they would tackle a rabbit? or how about some neighbour's stray rogue cats that like to crap in my flower beds every spring.

let see, what would be the most ferocious thing in my garden, besides me, ladybugs or perhaps a dragonfly, magpies can get pretty agressive(i remember 1 year when i was cleaning out my composter, i interupted a nest of mice and they dashed, they didn't get far as the magpies swooped in and ate them. wasps, they can get aggressive and like to stop in and drink from my birdbath and snack on my wooden fence.

.........nice pictures.
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Thanks I was working in the garden when it approached and I had to "quietly" "Yell" to my wife to bring the camera. She gets the glory she took the shots. It stayed dead still while I stood still looking at it but started to move then move away once Paula arrived and started snapping.

That eat drink and be merry gets taken to extreems at times. On another farm that I had down south I was working in my garden when I heard screaming, like a child or something and I raced over to a big old dead tree and there was one big mean mother of a goanna with his head down a rabbit hole just ripping them baby rabbits out one by one and tearing them to shreds. he didnt stop till they were all dead then he stopped and ate them. It was real bloodlust stuff, It was dripping off him. So yes the answer is they will tackle a rabbit, cat, small dog. I quite often see them in the paddocks but I havent lost any lambs to them. My ram is an Awassi and has big horns so maybe thats the reason but I;m sure they would if they could.
 
Local animal control has caught several lately. They are very invasive, and of course have no preditors here-abouts. Apparently the reptile people just let them out when they get large, can't take care of them anymore, they break up with their girlfriend, or it tries to eat their girlfriends baby...
 
savages.

i can get reptiles as a pet from our local pet stores and can get just about any kind of lizard, bearded dragons, geckos are common; the province where i live has a strong reptile pet owners because our backyard houses 1 of the worlds largest dinosaur graveyard making paleontology very popular.

snakes are popular but large ones would have to be fed small rodents as rats are illegal in this province, $5000 fine, comes from the days when the praires of canada raised wheat for world markets(we still do but our metric tonnage drops every year, young kids grow up and head for the big cities as farming is not as sexy as working for a large telco)

DP are you saying I could be sitting on a beach in Daytona, in my thong(okay i really didn't have to go there, oh well damage is done) and a goanna could kick sand in my face as it chases a seagull?
 
Datil Patch said:
Local animal control has caught several lately. They are very invasive, and of course have no preditors here-abouts. Apparently the reptile people just let them out when they get large, can't take care of them anymore, they break up with their girlfriend, or it tries to eat their girlfriends baby...
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You don't have any gators there to eat them?
 
hot stuff said:
You don't have any gators there to eat them?
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they still dont eat enough of them.
I remember watching some show about the non-native reptile problem FL has going on, they're trapping non-stop & I even think they made a law against the sale of certain species of reptiles in FL ?

like for Burning Colon its not even an issue, he can probably buy any type of reptile in canada cuz its not gonna survive outside. unlike FL they will survive & thrive plus over come the natural species that were not used to these non-native species.
 
Nice Gould's Monitor. Size wise, Gould's don't get that big. 4'-5' and about ~5 + pounds. There are others in the gouldi family that can get big. I keep Varanus flavirufus or sand monitors. They use the trees to get away if that is what is near. They are ground dwellers by nature and shelter in burrows. If you are in WA, Womas and Blackheaded pythons eat them. I breed some of those too.

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We get Western Blue Tongued lizards, bob tailed lizards, Tiger, gwader, dugite,bandy bandy snakes, Childrens and southwest carpet pythons, numerous geckos and skinks, heaps of different frogs and long necked tortoises, and probaly heaps of stuff we done see. We have wallabies kangaroos echidnas, wild pigs and goats on our property and the occasional emu.
 
Burning Colon said:
Snip

DP are you saying I could be sitting on a beach in Daytona, in my thong(okay i really didn't have to go there, oh well damage is done) and a goanna could kick sand in my face as it chases a seagull?
Click to expand...


I am so going to need more therapy... we have desert, swamp and bog, and a few microclimes that are almost rainforest like. They caught a Nile Monitor Lizard just over the bridge about 5 miles from me. It stopped traffic on the highway as people thought it was a gator walking across the highway. A brood pair will lay over 1000 eggs a year.

You may get out on the beach and have a 15ft boa constrictor start coiling on your leg...
 
The media really sucks. They spout off crap and people believe it. Nile monitors can't lay 1000 eggs a year and boa constrictors do not get 15'.
 
Not your fault. The media will blow things way out of proportion. It almost seems as if they do it to help pass crappy laws that really do nothing to solve the real problem. Congressman Tom Rooney of Florida has reintroduced bill HR 511 because of a problem that only exists in south Florida. They had a bunk study done claiming that the invasive species of burmese, and african rock pythons could spread to the lower 3rd of the United States. Well we all saw the big cold snap last year kill off a lot of animals including native species. The invasive animals have little to no chance any further north. If what they are saying is true, we would have seen the mexican boa constrictor spread into the US but it hasn't. If the bill passes (it has already been defeated once under a different name/number) it will stop the interstate commerce of the reptile trade which is a multi million dollar business and will put many Americans out of work. From the big supply companies and breeders to the small mom and pop breeders that are just trying to survive and make a living. Sorry for the OT rant. It just hits close to home.
 
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