Nothing beats a 4am tipsy visit from her. After me springing for the 100 cab ride from the city for her to come up to the mountain I figured it’d be an eventful night. The night however, proved much more eventfull than anticipated. Indeed, I was up to my balls in eventfulness. As we are having a romantic kiss at the doorway, I feel a sonic wind behind my knees. Fucking Cleo has just bolted out the door and into the night. Stopping to turn a few meters away. Waiting for us to notice her. As soon as we do, she disappears down the gravel driveway, white ass bouncing like an African gazelle. Taunting us the same way a gazelle would taunt lion. We give chase. Vampirella in a very short, very tight black leather mini-skirt, black lace stockings, black high high heels and nothing little black shirt. Me in blue terry clothe robe, open and flapping behind me like a superhero cape as my other wise nude body is propelled by my UGG-boot clad feet. We chase the little cunt Cleo for 45 minutes until she discovers the goats a several properties over. Now forgetting instantly us, bolting over to start attacking the goats. Mera, who we have let out to act as an attractant to Cleo, sheds her dogginess and lets her dingo side take full control. She is hunting too. Oooooooooooooohh nooooooooooo!!!!!!!! This has gone from farcical to extremely fucked. Australia has a one-strike and you are dead rule when it comes to dogs harassing livestock. Two dingoes actually attacking is even worse. They are not bitting but rather using the uniquely dingo very long, bladelike canine incisors, to slice at the back of the legs. Looking to slice that first tendon. After that, the prey is easy pickings. I don’t need a trumpet up my ass to know this is an extremely fucked up situation. In high heels and a very short leather mini skirt, on a steep muddy slope, Vampirella does the most amazing sprint and then superwoman fly through the air, crash tackling of Cleo, getting an arm around the neck while pinning Cleo’s body to the ground. Looks up and gives me the sweetest grin. Cleo doesn’t struggle, she knows the game is up. Mera morphs back into her doggy alter-ego. Legendary!!!.
Shortly thereafter I am off to Weipa for a pair of film shoots. First one is very routine, yet another German film crew. Colour-by-numbers. Baiting in big bull sharks during the day, stingrays at dusk, and sea snakes at night. Too bloody easy. During the filming of one scene I finally saw my first wild taipan up there and was off like a rocket after it down the road wearing just shorts and sandals. Definitely the most fun I’ve ever had chasing after a snake. The next crew arrived about two hours after the Germans left. This crew was two mates of mine from South Africa (Don and Devon) and Don’s lovely Aussie fiance’ Teresa. We knocked off an entire three day shoot in only two and a half hours. The resulting footage was awesome and everybody was thrilled. The crew departed early the next morning and I spent the next two days fishing with the producer. The fishing in Weipa is legendary!
On the way back to Melb I stopped off at Townsville for the weekend to hear my dear mate Sammy-G play in her reggae band. During the first night some drunken dickhead tried to start a fight with me. This triggered elements of my dark past. I used to get in lots of bar fights just for fun. I didn’t need my psychology degree to spot some random dickhead looking for a fight. He’d be out for a fuck or a fight and with a shit-shirt like that, there was no way he was going to get laid. I was the predator who hunted other predators. And finding a new victim was never difficult. There is some sort of alpha-male pissing contest ritual that is supposed to be followed like dance steps. Get in each others face. A shove. A punch. A writhing mêlée. I didn’t buy into that. This was a barfight, Marquess of Queensberry rules did not apply. I preferred to just cut to the chase and deliver a headbutt the instant someone got in my face. Nothing is more devastating than a well-placed headbutt. The element of surprise is one of its true strengths. I would strike instantly wth total fury and as little of warning as possible. It is quite unexpected in any circumstance and particularly not within a microsecond after some random Neanderthal got into my face and said ‘You looking for a probl-’ Sentence left unfunished as his unconscious ass hit the ground, to be drug outside by the bouncers (typically mates of mine) at leisure. The secret to the heatbutt is to use the hard, rounded top part of the forehead. Smashing it full force into the much thinner part of the centre of the forehead bounces their brain off the inside of the skull. If not knocking out instantly, then at least stunning this piece of meat long enough for a sharp punch to the solar plexus, that nerve centre of fun that if tagged right instantly disables the ability to breathe. At this point my preferred option was to snap a kick to the side of the head. Depending on where it landed, he was either going unconscious finally or was going to have his jaw broken. Either way, he was now my victim. If I was feeling particularly cruel that night, after the solar plexus punch but before the inevitable kick, I’d hook a few punches as hard as I could into his kidneys so that he’d be pissing blood for the next week. However, I have left that world behind me and I do not want to go back into it. I don’t like that side of me. So when this idiot appeared out of the crowd, for no reason, and said ‘you got a problem with me’. With a cheery smile on my face I said ‘No mate, not unless you want one’. This confused him since I was totally relaxed. No tension at all. So nothing for him to use to escalate the situation. He came back a few minutes later, no result again. He went away even more confused. At that time someone had a quiet word in his ear. That I was just hear to enjoy hearing my mates play, and that I was quite capable of putting him in the hospital if I felt like it. He actually listened to his lone functioning brain cell and came up and shook my hand while apologising. I wasn’t smug, just said ‘its all good mate’. I actually used his camaraderie to raise the call for ‘encore’ after Banda Moon finished their set. See miracles can happen, I have grown up in at least one area!
Sammy and I had a few enjoyable day using drift-lines with funnel & pit-traps at one of her survey spots south of Townsville before it was time for me to fly back to Melbourne. The Komodo Dragon & Megalania study finally was coming out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (click here to download the PDF). This study was a vessel into which I had poured no small amount of my life-force. Truly my favourite study to-date and certainly one that will persist long after my I have become worm-bait. Getting it published took almost as long as it did to do the work! Destroying an existing paradigm always is going to be a fight. This study showed for the first time that the effectiveness of the Komodo Dragon bite is a combination of highly specialized serrated teeth and venom. We also dismiss the widely accepted theory that prey die from septicemia caused by toxic bacteria living in the dragon’s mouth. We used two types of medical imaging techniques (CT-scans and magnetic resonance imaging) to examine the cranial mechanics and the soft tissue architecture of the venom glands. The cranial mechanics investigations showed that the Komodo Dragon has a remarkably weak bite and that the skull is poorly adapted to resist the twisting motions that would result from holding onto a prey item. However the skull is well adapted for pulling backwards, which facilitates the infliction of deep wounds by the long, blade-like serrated teeth. The MRI results revealed that the Komodo Dragon has the most complex venom glands yet described for any venomous animal, and that its close extinct relative Megalania was the largest venomous animal to have lived. These large carnivorous reptiles are known to bite prey and release them, leaving the prey to bleed to death from the horrific wounds inflicted. We have now shown that it is the Komodo Dragon's tooth and venom, combined-arsenal that account for their hunting prowess. The combination of specialized bite and venom seems to minimise the Dragon's contact with prey and allow it to take large animals. We believe that the dragon is able to weaken and immobilize their prey with a venomous bite that increases the damage done by their long serrated teeth. In addition to using mass spectrometry to obtain a profile of the venom proteins we also constructed a cDNA libraty to recover the mRNA transcripts expressed in the dragon’s venom gland and thus obtain full-length sequences for use in molecular phylogenetic analyses. We then tested the effects of the venom and found it to be similar to that of the gila monster and many snakes which cause a severe loss in blood pressure by widening blood vessels, thereby inducing shock in a victim. These findings may explain the observations by that Komodo Dragon prey become still and unusually quiet soon after being bitten. Bitten prey also bleed profusely, consistent with our discovery that the venom was also rich in toxins that prolong bleeding. For the icing on the cake, we examined fossils of the Dragon's giant extinct relative Megalania (Varanus priscus). From similarities in skull anatomy they determined that this seven meter lizard would have used a similar venom and bite system, making it the largest venomous animal to have ever lived. The media attention was considerable. However, I got absolutely hammered by a cold virus the day it came out. The curse of the Komodo Dragon got me again! Two nights before I was to fly out of Melbourne to the scorching heat of the Arizona and New Mexican desert, I curled up at 6pm in front of the wood stove heater to warm up. I got a bit warmer than I planned.
I’d much rather be woken up by a smokin’ hot young nun giving me a blowjob than to be woken up by the banshee screech of the smoke alarm announcing that my house has just turned into fiery hell. But in life, we don’t always get a choice in such matters. I had been snoozing for maybe a half hour when I awoke to meter and a half high flames erupting from what used to be my roof. Something had gone wrong and the top of the chimney had set the roof on fire. I grabbed one of the fire extinguishers always on the ready near the reptile cages, and then rang 000 in an absolute panic, and then emptied the other fire extinguisher. I raced twice up to the roof with buckets to pour water on the flames. The second time one leg went through the weakened roof, tearing lateral ligaments of my left knee. I was utterly out of my depth in a crisis for the first time in my life. I know where I stand with any animal but fire is the one thing that truly scares me. The flames were racing along inside the space between the roof and the fancy straw insulation/ceiling. It had already spread from the lounge room to the computer room and the house was heating up real fast. A meter thick blanket of smoke covered the ceiling all through the house. The dingoes were outside but absolute blind with fear. The Community Fire Association crew were absolute legends. In less than five minutes they were here in all their technicolor-lighted glory, and tearing the roof apart from the inside to get to the internal fire. Getting it out in no time but at the same time rendering the house into a black swamp. Ash and extinguisher powder covering all available surfaces like a grey funeral shroud. I was on the phone with the insurance company while trying to calm down two absolutely freaking out dingoes. Their worst nightmare was happening. Fire. Nothing scares an animal (or me) quite like it.
As always, there is some inevitable humour. One of my neighbours, the only ones I actually know in my part of the mountain, is also the CFA coordinator. She was away from the mountain at the time she saw the fire on her pager and saw it was the house next to hers. So she rang the truck when coordinator saying for them to make sure the dogs were OK, to mind the electric fence and that there were large quantities of goannas in residence. A rather unusual call out for them!!
More seriously, she said that if I wasn’t so religious about making sure I always have a fresh battery in the smoke detector, then I would have certainly died of smoke inhalation. She also said that type of fire, in between the ceiling and roof, is the worst kind and usually the house is lost. Indeed, mine was the best outcome they’ve ever had. Then again, they’ve never been called out to a herpers house. All good herpers are very concerned about fire so I have two fire extinguishers always pressure-tested and good to go, one in the house, one in the herp building. I spent until almost dawn cleaning up, crashed for a few hours and continued mopping. The combination of powder from the extinguishers, plus ash and water is the worst mess to clean up. Ironically I did not seek refuge in alcohol in exactly the situation most people would be clutching the bottle like a life-preserver to a drowning man at sea. But it appealed to my sense of irony to finally make the conscious decision not to deal with my problems chemically. I was leaving in 18 hours and an already insane schedule just got phenomenally more complicated. I needed full strength, stamina and alertness to pull it off. Fine. Also ironically, the pups were contently asleep. Not a care in the world. The powers of dingoes to reboot their inherent innocence is always so wonderful to be around. The insurance company, AAMI, were incredible. I was absolutely gobsmacked. The night of the fire they had two repair people there, one to temporarily wind-proof the giant sky-light where my lounge room roof used to be and another to tweak the wiring so that the burnt wires hanging down in the lounge room were cut off, and there fore I had power for the rest of the house so that I could clean and pack. The next day they had a proper crew out to board and tarp up the roof so that it could over-winter while I was away for three and a half months. I’ll get the full repairs done when I return. They also had the money for my damaged personal belongings in the bank the very next day!! I have been paying a fortune for coverage with them, but you get what you pay for in such things. With my life-style, I always maximise insurance (not just for rental cars!). I choose AAMI because during the big Canberra fires a few years back, Alexia’s uncle lost a good chunk of his house. He had that company and had no hassells while his neighbours who went with the cheaper companies had one drama after another.
After packing all night, I boarded the plane to fly to the desert with only two hours sleep in the previous 48. As worn out as I have ever started a trip. But being in the baking heat and playing with venomous reptiles will rejuvenate me quicker than anything else! No better cure for fatigue and jetlag. Except perhaps being woken up while being given a blowjob by a smoking hot blonde nun!!
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