Visitor

[den]

When I came home from work today, I discoved that I was being menaced by a dangerous creature.






Sunning herself on the path




Making a break for the garden to continue her rampage among the molluscs.

Comments

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

oh wow! she is a beauty!
closest i have come to getting a blurry bluetongue photo was when i cornered one in the garage.... oooh boy, dod it ever start hissing and get snappity. i left it alone to find it's own way out! :-)

[incognita.livejournal.com]

SWEET! Blue tongue!

[imzadi.livejournal.com]

Yikes! It's cool looking, but bizarre.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I have wild blue-tongue lizards in my yard! 8)

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Those are lovely pictures of a gorgeous lizard! If that's your hand in the first picture, how did you get her to stay still and be held?

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

When I went on a trip down there, I was able to pet one and even let him lick my finger. They are very docile and seem fairly unafraid of humans. Their tongues are really dry and sand paper feeling! Felt really odd as he flicked it out and kept curling it around my finger ^^

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Dude! Huge.

And gorgeous.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Nifty! How big was it? A foot?

-TG

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Yes, about a foot long. Big ones grow up to 18 inches.

[jenny_evergreen]

That first shot is particularly awesome!

[bunyip.livejournal.com]

Nice lizard. :D

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

YAY!:)
Soon there will be eggs in them thar hills!

[mortonfox.livejournal.com]

It looks almost like a short snake!

[walkertxkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, what beautiful textures and colors! I think I'll admire from a (respectful) distance. I seem to remember that they can bite quite hard when provoked?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

They don't have teeth as such, but the bite is like a vice and bloody hurts. You have to be really unlucky if they draw blood, and careless to get bitten in the first place.

[frith]

Cool! I've never been bitten by a blue tongue (and never aspire to be bitten by one either) but I have been bitten by ornate horned toads (two at the same time, the blighters). Vinegar! Household vinegar is the key that unlocks those jaws! Just a drip in the corner of the mouth and those toads dropped right off. How did I know? Millipedes and ants and unhappy toads jumped right off the pages of my Biology text books and told me so themselves.

No ticks?

[falconea.livejournal.com]

That's interesting - I can't see any ticks in it's ear.

I'm accustomed to every bluetongue and bobtail (shingleback) I meting in the wild having it's ears full of ticks, and often on bobtails between the scales. On bad cases they also have them on the big jaw muscles.

Most of my experience is from WA, and some from Victoria.

walkertxkitty: yes, they bite when in a bad mood. They're not as aggressive as the bobtail however, and the jaw muscles are much weaker than the bobtails. Bobtails can break bones in your hand - bluetongues won't.

Audrey

Audrey

Re: No ticks?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

No bush ticks! I think the dry spell has knocked them around.

[jbadger.livejournal.com]

dangerous creatures! (to it's prey)

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Only if you're a snail or slug.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[tropism.livejournal.com]

Are they related to skinks or something? They have a really similar body type.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

They are a skink. They can lose the tail if they have to, and grow it back, but it requires a really hard pull. It doesn't just drop off.

[frith]

Biggest damn skinks in the wooooorld!