The ponds of the monitor lizards were almost waist deep with dark murky
water and you had to feel around until you touched the head, leg or
body of the monitor (they are less likely to bite in water). Then I
would feel around till I got the tail, slowly lift it to the surface
and grab the neck under the water. Their necks were so huge that I
could hardly get my fingers round them. On land, catching them by
grabbing the tail was much faster, but one had to avoid the biting head
by quickly grabbing the neck.
Once, when the Croc Bank staff wanted to get some monitors down from
the trees, they just took a long stick and pushed them over from the
height of almost a two storey building. They fell on the ground but
suffered no damage and just continued running around. I recall the day
Gerry challenged Nikhil "the bodybuilder" to pull a monitor lizard that
was half out of a burrow. At first he thought the monitor's tail would
break but though he tugged with all his might his rippling muscles
couldn't move an inch of the monitor.
In the mornings, I helped the workers clean the croc pits, a task which
I thoroughly enjoyed. We would jump into the pits with big sticks and
chase all the crocs into the water. Then we would clean out the croc
shit and the left overs of their food which included a lot of bones.
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