Fake news. The movie monster Godzilla was inspired by this hideous prehistoric reptile.
Posted on 03/14/2020 10:13:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Wow. They were wrong all along huh?
Fake news. The movie monster Godzilla was inspired by this hideous prehistoric reptile.
Bkmk
If your uniforms on them, could this replace the NBA or NFL?
“OK, I want a clean fight. Nothing below the belt. No biting! And may the best lizard win.”
So my friend showed me how to do it, and we did catch a monitor lizard (which can get big, up to 8 feet or so, IIRC, but not nearly as big as Komodo dragons which look similar, just hugely bigger)
You have to take a large piece of bamboo, cut it so it has a closed end at one side and open on the other, and then you gouge out and carve out a small rectangular hole in the top through which you can insert a piece of stepped bamboo that sticks down on the inside blocking entry to the chamber beyond. (Note: we didn't use bamboo, but made a small long, rectangular box out of wood, nailing it together. They taught pilots to use bamboo, IIRC)
You have to anchor the thing to the ground near a small sapling like tree. We used "Y" shaped branches that we drove into the ground and that was hard, but I think it would have made more sense to wedge the thing under roots or something. The biggest problem we had was getting the right sapling that wouldn't tear the box off the ground. (In retrospect, we could have used pieces of rope with stakes on each end, but as 12 year olds, that didn't occur to us)
Needless to say, we spent half a day in the jungle trudging around looking for the right tree after our intial failures, and had to try a bunch of times before we got it right where the thing would stay on the ground.
Once the box was anchored near the tree, you could tie the small piece of wood (with the stepped edge) via parachute cord to the small tree, put the food inside, then insert the small wooden part into the hole on top and trap it there. We baited it first with lettuce (someone told us lettuce would work better than meat) pushing it to the closed end with a stick, after which we put in the tab. Another parachute cord tied to the small wood trip was tied in a loose slipknot which was positioned around the open end.
The idea is, the monitor lizard sticks its head in the opening trying to get the food, knocks off the wooden trip getting to the food, the tree springs up and the slipknot tightens on the neck.
I did this drawing from memory:
This took us half a day to set up, not counting the walking to and from the area. We had to trudge out there to check it the next day and the next, but on the third day...there hanging from its neck tied to the sapling was a small monitor lizard, probably about four or five feet long!
I was pretty intimidated by it, but my friend who had been messing with all kinds of wildlife there long before I arrived there walked up to it with little hesitation. It had been dangling motionless, but as we approached, began gyrating wildly. He managed to get a length of parachute cord with a slipknot around its midsection, cut it loose from the tree and walked it out of the jungle. He told me the thing wouldn't attack him, but would run away, and all he did was steer it by dragging it! He kept in a trashcan for a few days, until his father told him he had to either kill it or let it loose.
Thanks for that. They like their meals to be “tender”.
Lol Sounds good.
They’d be good for keeping Snowflakes hidden away with fear.
Not practicing social distancing, imo.
Neat story.
#17 Jonny Quest
https://www.flickr.com/photos/peli301/28007136841
https://youtu.be/Vhbs_ywNgSA?t=317
Excellent! I was thinking about that!
A smaller monitor lizard makes a great pet. A Komodo is too big, unpredictable and dangerous for people to handle.
Think a snake on four legs.
Well, yes. They followed the rules, even without a referee.
If the bite doesn’t kill by loss of blood then the Bacteria in the Saliva will kill you.
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