Posted on 04/23/2021 2:21:44 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Police officers often risk their safety for others but as the public discovered recently, this applies to animals too.
On April 18, a group filming for the educational site, Just Keep Thinking noticed a monitor lizard in the middle of Republic Ave near Kallang Basin.
Read the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite. They alerted two nearby police officers who immediately attempted to rescue the lizard from danger.
In a video originally posted by Just Keep Thinking, the male officer is seen kneeling in the middle of the road and also standing over the lizard as he tries to steer the animal by its tail.
He even tries to point in the direction of the roadside at one point, hoping the lizard would understand.
Finally, after exhausting these methods of persuasion, he directs the lizard to move to the roadside. He then gently lifts it off the road and onto the grass.
Towards the end of the clip, the male officer is seen carrying the lizard and then placing it near the water at Kallang Basin – the female officer can be seen waving goodbye.
In the background, members of the public are heard cheering for the officers.
Some netizens on Facebook reacted with heart emojis to these clips and commenters expressed positivity towards this kind deed.
Another wrote, "These animals are (sic) oso our immediate neighbour now and need the kampung spirit too."
When encountering a monitor lizard in an urban area, members of the public are advised not to corner or touch the animal. You can also call the ACRES wildlife rescue hotline at 97837782.
It is my understanding that all monitors, not just the komodo variety, have so much bacteria in their mouths that a bite from them almost always makes the victim deathly ill. When I have encountered them (I often live in SE Asia), I try to give them a wide berth.
That is my understanding as well.
I lived in the Philippines when I was a kid, and they had monitor lizards there, and they could get up six or seven feet long, if I recall correctly. Not as big as Komodo Dragons, but that’s pretty big.
I had a friend whose father was a LCDR was involved in running the JEST (Jungle Environmental Survival Training) course they had in Subic Bay for pilot training up near NAS Cubi Point, and this kid got all kinds of cool knowledge and stuff from his dad.
One of the things he showed me how to do was make a trap for monitor lizards by building a small narrow box open on one end with the bait on the closed end (I forget what we baited it with) you anchor it to the ground with sticks, next to a small sapling or tree with a bendable low branch and tie a line to the branch and make a noose at the other end. Part way down, you make a little wooden thingamabob that you tie to the rope, bend the branch or sapling down, put the little wooden thing with a small lip into a hole you cut in the box, and arrange the open noose around the open end of the box.
When the lizard pokes it head through the open noose into the box to go for the bait, its snout knocks the little wooden trigger loose, freeing the sapling or branch which swoops upwards, tightening the noose around the neck of the lizard and capturing it.
I remember being somewhat dubious of this, but he said he had built them and they worked as advertised. He said the trap could be made with bamboo and a bolo (machete) which we both had strapped to our waists. (as a 12 year old kid, it seems so odd that we were allowed to walk around with machetes on our person, but they were a prized thing, like the Navy issue boondockers my dad got for me...my Bolo came from “Yard Boy” as they were called, who did mowing and yard maintenance for our family. He said he had it made out of old car leaf springs for me! He wrapped the handle tight with multicolored twine, which gave it a completely cool “native” look...:)
We came back a couple of times a day to that point in the jungle for a day or two and found nothing, but then we came down, and damned if there wasn’t a lizard dangling there by it’s neck. It was about four feet long and it’s back legs were just off the ground.
It wasn’t moving and I thought for sure the noose had strangled it, but as we approached it, the thing began thrashing wildly! He went around and grabbed onto its tail and pulled it straight out while I grabbed the rope and untied it from the sapling, then he took another piece of rope and tied it around the abdomen of the lizard just in front of its legs.
He told me to let go of the rope, and I expressed concern that the lizard might whip around and attack him, but he said something to the effect of “I’ve done this before-they only run away from you” so I let go, and sure enough, the lizard ran away, and he wrangled the thing back onto the road and walked up the street with the lizard at the end of the rope!
He kept it in a trash can at his house until his father ordered him to release it a day or two later!
That is a cool story. I can well believe it. I’ve seen those machetes, made in a similar way. Our yard guys would use them to literally cut the grass with them and most anything else. We called them “parangs”. I have since learned and value machetes as wonderful outdoor tools. I own three machetes here in the states and several at our home overseas.
As to monitors, the local name for them is “kaki empat”, meaning “four legs”. Every now and again, one would start through the yard. Their journeys were never completed. My dingo would spot them and grab those things right behind its head and start whipping them around. Soon, the tail would fly off and the neck would break and that would be that. The dog was never bitten. That dingo was a great dog. Bad things, both animal and human would leave us alone while he was alive. I miss that dog.
It sounds like you are describing geckos, which are larger than the usual ones you see around lights, but smaller than the monitor lizards. (Geckos can be between six inches and a foot long...with tail IIRC) I say this because I am sure monitors don’t lose their tails...but geckos do.
But geckos are nothing to sneeze at either. I got bit by a good sized one trying to capture it, and the only way I got it to let go was be squeezing it so forcefully being its head that I recall its jaw and head nearly became misshapen before it opened its mouth...I had two little neat rows of blood droplets from those little needle-like teeth!
I had to look up the parang...the ones we had were very plain compared to that...I sure would have liked to have one of those...:
I have an old Army-issue type of machete, but the thing is worthless for any more than self defense (I would guess) since it has no heft or weight to it, and doesn’t seem to hold much of an edge...it is kind of flimsy. So...I keep it near my garage door in case I ever need it.
The heavier one I had as a kid could cut down a six inch bamboo with no problem. I suspect this one I have would require repeated hacking...
Cold-blooded ping for you, Sal!
Nope, we have geckos (cicak pronounced chee-chuck) and I love them for eating mosquitoes. These kaki empats are often about 1 foot long in their body with another foot-long tail. They stomp through the yards while cicaks scurry through my house, up the walls, and across the ceilings.
No monitor lizards I know of lose their tails...perhaps these are separate type of lizard.
I’ll defer to you, though...you sound like you have more experience with the species you see there!
The ones slapped around by my dog lost their tails. They also lost other body parts. It was bloody.
I’ll bet it was!
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