Skip to main content

Lizard Hunting Season

"Shhh... I'm hunting lizards."
With Australia heading into the summer months Lizard Hunting Season begins. Well at least it does for our dog Oscar who gives them a serious barking tirade whenever he finds one.

Australian Blue Tongue lizards are pretty common where I live, specifically the Eastern variety. Because we live a short distance from bushland we get more than our fair share in the back garden and, on a couple of occasions, even in the house.



Eastern Blue Tongue.
Photo: Aust. Travel Guide
Despite their short little legs these lizards can run pretty fast and even jump relatively well.

When cornered they puff up their body to nearly twice its size and give a pretty intimidating hiss as a warning.

They also have a pretty nasty bite if you happen to get in the way of their sizable looking mouths. Oscar found this out the hard way one year when one got a hold of him. We heard his yelps from the garden all the way in the house. Needless to say he doesn't get too close to one that's out in the open and hissing at him.

However he will stick his face right into a hole where he knows a lizard is hiding (and hissing) - so there's a nose bite waiting to happen.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind these lizards in our garden so much if Oscar hadn't taken to sniffing them out at every opportunity, and then barking at them continuously, like they have no right to be there. It's annoying as hell when you're trying to work. Worse than when the neighbors dog won't stop barking when they're out because it's our dog that won't stop barking!

Even the lizards get tired of it because they don't exactly run away. In fact I've seen them swear under their breath and charge forward at Oscar. Ever since he got bitten he's wise to that maneuver.

I have a feeling it's going to be a long summer.

Oscar the Lizard Hunter.


TET Life Topics:

Comments

  1. Mum60November 12, 2014 7:51 PM

    We used to get those in the garden in Whyalla, especially at Wittwer St, our first home there, as the garden was unmade for awhile and just red dust as ours and the house next door were the last two houses to be occupied. One of the neighbours a couple of doors down used to let one roam around his vegie garden as they eat the snails!

    It would be good if you could get a pillow case or towel or something to either guide the lizard into or pick it up behind the head with a towel or cloth and just put it back in the bush. If you leave them alone they are harmless. Those bearded dragons will chase you sometimes, as I've only seen on the TV, and they can't half run, as you know!

    We read in the paper once in Whyalla that someone had found one of those stumpy-tailed lizards on their toilet seat! There was one on the wall next door in Jenkinson st, but a long-tailed one and it was right next to their bathroom window which was open and they hadn't got a screen on it, so I went round to tell them to shut the window! (that was the house with the Asian lady married to an Aussie and they had the three children, two girls and the youngest a boy)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TET (David Arandle)November 12, 2014 11:44 PM

      They come into our yard from under the neighbours fence which I've now started to block off all the entry points. But these lizards are good diggers and seem to just make new spots to get in.

      I have a box that I can usually catch them in and then put them out in the front yard because once they're out there it's harder to get back in (and I can't be bothered walking all the way down to the park with them). The neighbours have a nicely landscaped yard with plenty of good rocks to sun bake on and hide behind - and they don't seem to mind the lizards so much.

      I don't mind the lizards. It's Oscar who's a pain with them because he seeks them out. Then if Bailey sees them he's big enough and dumb enough to pick them up in his mouth and throw them around. It's just not safe for the lizards to be in our backyard.

      Delete
  2. ThesestarsDecember 04, 2014 12:52 PM

    Your summer is coming, and our winter is here. Didn't realize that. Are the Corella's coming soon too? Or is that a different time of year? Oscar thinks its his job to get those lizzies off his property. I hope he stays safe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TET (David Arandle)December 04, 2014 4:17 PM

      I think the Corells's are more of a Spring time phenomenon as they're usually here when the trees are very green.

      Since I wrote this I've seen Oscar on several occasions barrel straight in and grab a lizard by the body and start shaking it around. So he clearly knows not to go for it's head anymore.

      Fortunately he's not strong enough to break their skin and hasn't actually killed any before I've stopped him but it's pretty confronting to see how a normally cute dog can be so violent.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated by an actual human (me, TET) and may not publish right away. I do read all comments and only reject those not directly related to the post or are spam/scams (I'm looking at you Illuminati recruiters... I mean scammers. Stop commenting on my Illuminati post!).

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...
3 comments
Continue Reading »

The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Image to Video Generator to Animate Art That Started as a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch

B ack in October of 2023 I used Prome AI's Sketch Rendering feature to color a 23 year old rough pen sketch I did of a princess watching butterflies, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. You can read more about that in my previous article,  The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Art Generator to Color and Enhance a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch The three images I used to create my final image (bottom right). Notice how closely the AI has followed my line art sketch (top left) but in the first image (top right) has misinterpreted the waterfall as some kind of large tree stump. Prome's render of the artwork was pretty good but I did end up creating a composite image myself from two of the best renders, to get my final image. Since then AI Image to Video has come a long way, particularly when it comes to creating animation from artwork and maintaining the art style for the whole generation. AI still does much better with turning photographic images to video but I found ...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements

TET heelflip - looking better but still not a land. A s of writing this I've stuck to my plan of filming myself skate every second Sunday. By the time this post goes up I will have three episodes done. As part of that goal I am also skating more between episodes, about every second to third day for an hour, practicing Braille's Skateboarding Made Simple, Volume 1. That said, I'm not posting these videos here immediately after they're posted to my @TETLife YouTube Channel because I only post an article once a week, and that would make every second article a Sunday Session post. These posts are really so I can add some additional thoughts after the fact, and, of course, because this blog is about all things that interest me, of which skateboarding is one of them. In episode two I had intended to speak to camera more than I do but my driveway is right next door to my neighbor's shed/workshop, and I get a little self-conscious if I'm not too sure whether he's th...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

The Australian Federal Election 2025 Could Be a Win For Independents

Australian Democrats founder, Senator Don Chipp, embodied the role of minor parties holding the balance of power with his quote of "keep the bastards honest." Photo Manipulated Caricature by TET. A s of writing this, the actual Australian Federal Election date has yet to be announced, as our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, attempts to keep the focus on the fallout of severe weather events in Queensland, however it's looking likely that some time in May is the safest bet. Despite this, all parties have been hard at campaigning, with smaller parties, and in particular, conservative independent candidates, seemingly rallying together to make sure people know how much influence they can have just by preventing the two major parties (Labor and the Liberal/National coalition) from having a majority in either (or both) houses of parliament. They're also doing their part to make sure voters finally understand that preferential voting works in everybody's favor over one ...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...
16 comments
Continue Reading »

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Major Parties and Their Promises

T he Australian Federal Election date has now been announced as May 3rd, 2025. As such I thought it might be interesting to explore some of the parties and candidates in a series of articles leading up to a final wrap up in the days after the winners are announced. This is by no means an unbiased viewpoint. I've said many times my political leanings are to the woke left because those people are way better at embracing casual Friday at work (though some of the more extremist left do have to be reminded clothes are still a mandatory requirement). The obvious place to start is with the two most boring centralist parties pretending to be either left or right but actually doing their best impression of 'cake' - everybody likes cake! The Australian Labor Party Otherwise known as the incumbent, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vying for his second term. The party is campaigning on seven key points including: Helping with the cost of living. Free GP visits & even cheaper m...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »