“I killed a dragon!”  Joe’s smile was brimming over.

No, it’s not a fantasy computer game character, or a symbolic inner demon of fear.  It was a very real, very big lizard that Joe killed.  It was one of the “takuat” river lizards that live in southern Thailand and nearby.  There are a lot of them, around our nearby river. To an uninitiated European visitor, they are startlingly large and you don’t expect them in your garden munching on the rhododendrons.

“Dragon” is a typical translation, but Monitor Lizard is the more official English name for the biggest lizard family on earth.  Some are three or four metres long.  Some do look like mythical dragons, other like small dinosaurs or strange alligators.

Are they dangerous?  No, only very rarely, and only if you really threaten them.

Why did he kill it? It was eating his baby chicks. He’s a farmer protecting his brood – a brood he will kill and eat later. That thing was eating both his dinners and his profits.

I’m no expert.  All bird farming I ever saw involved huge cages, or coops for the night, to keep foxes and other predators out.  His cage had sides but no top.  Maybe free ranging needs higher fencing?

I am not liking his story, but he goes on eagerly.

“It ran up a tree, trying to escape me and the dog.  I threw rocks until one hit, and it fell.  I killed it with a garden hoe.”

And then?

“In the trash.”  He was beaming with triumph.  If he enjoyed this kill, that’s creepy, but the chicks were saved.

Last year, a huge dragon (see photo) had a panic attack and rampaged across my kitchen, upsetting everything and flashing stout, scary claws.  Two brave, knowledgeable neighbours secured it firmly by the back of the neck and mid-tail, so it dangled and thrashed but couldn’t actually slash anyone or anything.  They got him into a sack, and took him to the river.

“Haha, maybe not, maybe they ate him,” said Joe. I doubt this.

“Did you eat yours?”

“Never!” he was insulted by the idea.

Joe and I agree that hunting for fun is no good at all.

Neither of us are 100% vegetarians.

If these lizards were rampant and not disappearing, or if they were farmed, I might be interested to try eating one.  But, I wish he hadn’t killed this one.  Here’s the stupid punchline why:

He said he’ll soon disband the poultry farm.  There are only half a dozen birds left.  He’ll find buyers and get them butchered. He knows a good man.

So why kill that lizard?  Granted, it scared the hell out of me with those claws, doing its hysterical scissor-hands frenzy.  Far worse, twice I saw it eating the big yellow blossoms off my pumpkin vines, and that really stung bitterly because I love pumpkin soup, and I’d have battered and fried those nice sweet trumpet-flowers too.  He knew what was yummy, spiralled that 12-inch tongue around it, snapped it clean and swallowed it whole.  Fooey.

However, I don’t think the death penalty is in order.  It wasn’t a policy Joe thought out, I suspect, but rather he acted on the heat of the moment.  Maybe his blood turned to steam at the sight of his baby chicks getting stalked by a metre-long dragon and its alligator jaws. His dad genes kicked in and he killed the dragon to save the chicks.

Those chicks were for human lunch, not reptile.

It’s just not simple, is it?

For more about monitor lizards, click here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_lizard

l