Wildlife In Our Midst
by Huang Zhi-Wei aka Reg Wong
In an instant, the meaning of serendipity dawned on me : good luck in making unexpected fortunate discoveries! And that’s what happened to me.
It was a typical Australian mid-December day, cloudless blue skies overhead, the slightest of breezes teasing the gum leaves of the canopy, humidity oppressive enough to make long sleeves uncomfortable and temperature elevated sufficiently to warrant another cold gold KB. I was making my way to a fortnightly St Vincent de Paul Society meeting at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Forestville when I chanced upon this magnificent specimen, a sight beyond the rims of my wildest imagination. As if moulded in solidified pitch, it was embracing the trunk of a 80-year old Forest Red Gum just outside our church entrance. In the blink of an eye, I was a kid again. Poised on my lips but unuttered was the question, “What is it - a dragon emerging out of the pages of my childhood fairy tales?” As my doubting eyes focussed on it, I was transfixed, my entire body a pillar of rigidity. Fearful of making the slightest sudden movement which could be interpreted as an intention to cause it harm, I remained stationary, every fibre of my body restrained, all the better for me to marvel at my good fortune and to take in as much as possible of the sight of such a rarity.
Typical of a city dweller, I had never been exposed to anything so primitive, so large, so black, so fearsome and yet so real. Later I was to learn (from what else but Google?) that it was a Lace Monitor (Varanus varius), also known as a tree goanna, a native of Eastern Australia. On some of my forays into West Head, I had encountered some goannas foraging for food scraps abandoned by environmentally unfriendly picnickers but never one approaching half the size of this one before me. I judged its length at a conservative minimum of two meters. (As a graduate inter alia of accountancy, my habit is always to err on the side of conservatism.) This variety is indisputably the paragon of all Australian monitors. Pursed on my lips was the question : why was it here in a heavily-populated environment, in the midst of civilization, and so remote from its wooded habitat? To this day, the question remains unanswered. Do you have a plausible explanation?
Obviously surprised to see a diametrically opposite species, it paused to eye me with curiosity and suspicion, as any bush Australian would reflexively do when confronted (especially) by a never-before-sighted Oriental immigrant. It made no haste to scale to greater heights to seek solitude or safety, its languidity - or is it lethargy? - more than likely induced by having satiated itself on some hapless rabbit as evidenced by its generously proportioned midriff. (Rabbits are plentiful on the grounds behind our OLGC Church.)
Rousing from my fixedness, I inched towards the creature to get a photo of high fidelity, all the time ready to retreat
if it snarled or hissed a warning at me. Its yellow eyes blinked once and then, like an MRI machine, scanned the length of me, monitoring my every twitch of nose or lips. When I was sufficiently indiscrete enough to breach privacy, it synchronously raised one front paw and one hind leg and began its deliberate ascent up the tree. Satisfied that I had captured it with my photo-lens - for future proof I had not succumbed to imagination which distorted senses and diluted sanity - I bade it farewell. Just as I stepped away, I was joined by Richard, my Vinnies co-worker. Startled by the creature, he let out an expletive and then exclaimed, “Goodness, what a monster! It must be at least eight foot long!” and thus lent unsolicited credence to my own modest estimate of the creature’s size.
Satisfied we had witnessed - and photo-recorded - a real-life experience to share with possible doubting Thomases, we reluctantly retreated to continue packing Christmas hampers with other Vinnies volunteers.
That night. I reflected on the day’s events and, with the ghost of a wry smile defining my mouth, I thought : Isn’t it satisfying to discover that domestic wildlife, apart from the ubiquitous brush turkey, still returns to our midst, albeit infrequently?