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Day 12: Lizard Island
October 3, 2005
In the morning, Amie and I
headed out much earlier for a hike in search of the monitor lizards
I was looking for. We took
the same route through the mangrove forest and over the mountain's
sandy trail. I was convinced we have better luck before the sun
made the island too hot. The first lizard I heard, when it
fled our approach on the trail. It made for deeper woods, crashing
through the bushes. But I could see his silhouette in the underbrush
before he disappeared. We made our way to the other side of the
island with no other sightings.
Finally, we spotted our first one
as we were heading back to the Makulu. Well, actually, Amie
spotted it as I was prattling on about the behavior of Monitor
Lizards. He was about 6 feet long, and stretched out across the
dirt road we were walking on. He was frozen in his tracks, trying
to assess whether we were a threat or not. I snapped a few shots
from where we stood. But as he turned to flee, I gave chase in
hopes of getting a better shot of him. (Fortunately for both
of us, he was too fast.)
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Click
to watch video: Lizard Island Monitor Hunt

Click
to watch video: Other side of Lizard Island
As we continued our hike, we started
seeing more of these robust lizards. I took a bunch of shots, but usually they were hard
to capture with the camera.
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