Biawak II: Son of Biawak
The Biawak returns [See the first appearance]! Late this afternoon, as maghrib approached, my wife heard a rustling in the back yard. About five feet from our back stoop was an enormous biawak, apparently stalking a young cat sitting atop our recyclables. I rushed to get my camera, but it was on to me and made for the jungle. It would have gotten away, except it ran to the corner of the fence that I had recently reclaimed and propped back up [See The Yard: Adventures in Tropical Horticulture]. Trapped, it started ramming the fence.
It even managed to climb halfway up the fence I share with my neighbors, a bunch of single Chinese guys. It would have surely met its doom if it had succeeded, because three of them had emerged from the house with a parang, a cangkol and the ultimate multipurpose Malaysian tool, a length of belian. Biawak is good eatin’, I’ve heard, and they might have eaten well if that was their intention, because this thing was well over four feet long, and thick in the middle. But it couldn’t scale the fence, and after dropping back down, it was scared enough to run straight in my direction along the fence till it reached the downed portion, and clambered off into the jungle. I may have to delay my plan to get a few chickens until the fence is fully functional. I don’t know if the biawak would’ve taken out the cat or not, but chickens are a definite staple of the diet for any biawak living close to humans.
in redford we had ground hogs rember them? my mom thinks there is a wild dog out there whos ash eaten some em. chanol
KILL the cock!
i mean the one from over the holiday that messed with yer kids too
reptiles are COOL! WOW to see one not in captivity, esp a big’un! WOWZA!!!!!
Thanks for the peek into part of your life. I am so grateful for all the “personal” bloggers; my view of the world is so much broader.
The pictures of plants are cool and everything Big Brother, but we want more pictures of the kids!
Love and miss you.
The biawak reminds me of the igaunas that inhabited St Thomas USVI when we were students there in the 70s. They would scamper outalong the long branches of the canopy trees until the branch became too slender to support their weight, then they would crash on through to the ground an lie there stunned for a moment. I captured one that way by setting a trash can over it while it lay there. If cornered, they would face you and open and close their mouth and thrash their tail back and forth in a way reminiscent of a wind-up toy, more comical than threatening but I never put them to the test at that point. They were about 5 pounds and 2 feet long, hals of that tail. Rumor had it you could eat them, most of the meat was the base of the tail, which is theway it is for alligators according to a gut I used to work with at the Detroit Zoo who had eaten ‘gators growing up poor in South Carolina.
Leave your response!
Ephemera
Pete O'Neal, former Black Panther, is running an orphanage in rural Tanzania and confronting his mortality.
Author and Professor Dr Jamillah Karim spent a year living in Kuala Lumpur. Read this great interview by Sister Brooke, and then visit Dr Jamillah's blog for a series of thoughtful reflections on what living in Malaysia was like for her as an African American Muslim, what insights she gained about the immigrant Muslim experience in America and more.
Granfalloon (n) : "A proud and meaningless association of human beings." A word coined by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) in his book Cat's Cradle. I was recalling the concept recently for some reason but couldn't bring the term to mind. There it is: A granfalloon. The idea is illustrated in the book by a woman from Indiana who is just thrilled to meet Hoosiers everywhere she goes, a Hoosier being a name for people from the state of Indiana, but the shared qualities she recognizes in Hoosiers exists only in her own mind. Thanks, Kurt.
Recent Photos on Flickr
Recent Comments
Subscribe
Meta
Blogroll
Most Commented