The Horror Monitor!

What would you do if you saw this outside your bedroom window? HELP!!!!!! It is a Lace Monitor and is not a common, small gecko visitor as our friends can bear witness.

Here is what our friends Suzi and Toby wrote up from their nature diaries and shared with us...

A lace monitor belongs to the goanna family.   We identified it as a lace monitor as they are the only monitor to have a forked tongue.  The one we saw was striped with dark grey and light creamy stripes.  It can climb trees and the lattice outside of windows!  We found out that it would eat a wide range of stuff including snakes, small mammals, eggs and even roadkill.  Lace monitors can dislocate their jaws to eat bigger things like a snake can.  They usually lumber slowly along but when they need to they can go quite quickly.  When they are about to lay their eggs they dig a hole in a white ant's nest to lay their eggs in.  Then they let the white ants build back over the eggs.  When the eggs are ready to hatch the female digs them out.  Our lace monitor was about 1.5 to 2 metres long. 

Thank you Suzy and Toby - very interesting indeed!