Down Under Pets

Through my following @justjenking on Twitter, a retired operating room nurse, journalist, obituary writer and first responder (the résumé gets longer when you've passed 50) who lives in Australia, I get a sense of what goes on Down Under.

This can be floods, hot summer days when we're in winter, scenic landscape, colorful animals, flowers, and some politics thrown in. I also get Tweets of the wildlife that makes its way into homes, principally snakes and frogs. Australia is known for its snakes and spiders, and of course kangaroos.

A good picture of a snake curled behind your refrigerator always makes you realize Aussies live in a different environment. And then there's the backyard pets. 

Dogs and cats I'm sure constitute pets down there, just like here, but there can be slightly more exotic choices crawling around.

Take @markrduckett who posted a video that @justjenking picked up on of something plopped on a mat of some kind that's fallen, or been pulled off a backyard clothesline. From the video I couldn't identify the animal. An anteater? An armadillo? Something with a scaly back.

I quipped that "every yard should have one of those" thinking that it was some kind of critter that crawled into the yard. Another Australian exotic animal. I got a few "likes," one from the person @markrduckett who posted the backyard video. I never get more than a few "likes."

Since I got a "like" I then thought to ask what was the animal? Mark replied, a "lace monitor." Okay, I haven't watched enough nature shows to know what that is, so off to Googleland. It's a lizard, that apparently can be for sale for those who want a lace monitor as a pet. Even here in the States.

A further Tweet from @markrduckett informed me that the animal goes inside as well; the photo above. Yikes! 

I dug a little deeper into Mr. Duckett's Twitter scroll and found other images of the lace monitor on his patio. Two in fact, one with a name Baldrick. For Mr Duckett, these are pets. His profile states he may post animal pics. Got that right. His Twitter home page shows a lace monitor on a log.

To each their own. Perhaps a lace monitor is a predator of snakes. Certainly with that flicking tongue, spiders. So, this might be a way not to be bothered by snakes and spiders Down Under. A preemptive strike against the known invaders. Just like we might expect an outside cat to keep rodents away. Female cats are great for this.

All I know is, if someone here in New York were to be seen walking their lace monitor, someone would call the police while running away.

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