Dat Xmas

Here's a fun story about what we did when we visited the family for Christmas this year: We brought the dog. We took him to McDonald's before, had him out shopping, but never had him with us all day long when visiting someone, so it was an experiment of sorts. We brought his favourite shoe for him to chew on, but he was too busy exploring the house, hogging the cat's food bowls and sleeping in everyone's laps. He really likes being rubbed behind his ears. He leans into it and everything. They were all happy to have him, everyone spent lots of time petting and cuddling him and we've all hand-fed him prawns and turkey and other goodies. He didn't make a mess or bite anyone and really behaved himself.

Sounds like absolutely every other dog, right? "So what, he behaved exactly the way you'd expect a good dog to behave" and all that. Absolutely right. But in case you're new around here - this is what our "dog" looks like:

Woof!

Tame as a puppy

Our dog happens to be a 4ft monitor lizard. And yes - he ran around the family's house, with two cats around and people feeding him treats by hand. It is quite a sight to behold. You see, he tends to be a bit vicious around feeding time:

Seems insane to offer him food with your bare hands, right? Especially something tiny like a prawn.

It was a lot more terrifying for the shrimp, really.

I know it sounds unbelievable, but Hugo Bosc was ridiculously careful and gentle. He grabbed the food in slow-motion, practically gumming it, carefully avoiding people's fingers. It was just as amazing to behold as the fact that everybody was brave enough to even try hand-feeding him as though it was perfectly normal.

Hugo is tame, housebroken, friendly with people and other pets and he never ceases to amaze me. It's so incredible what these clever monitor lizards can do and what awesome pets they make when you spend enough time with them. Reptiles are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for, which is slowly becoming more apparent through recent research. 

One big difference between a monitor lizard and your average dog or housecat is that cats and dogs have been domesticated for an eternity. They've been around humans for many generations, many of them are bred to be pets, whereas monitor lizards are often caught in the wild and then sold in shops. They're only just starting to breed monitor lizards for pet shops now that they're becoming more popular, but when you buy a monitor today, there's a pretty good chance you're getting a wild animal.

When Hugo was a baby he was terrified by people. He'd run, hide and, if everything else failed, attack anyone who would get too close to him. And a monitor lizard tail-whipping you or clamping down on your hand is a pretty painful experience. Most people keep monitor lizards as a status symbol of sorts, something cool to look at and to show off to friends, and feed them when necessary and watch them from outside the cage where it is safe. They tend to be aggressive when you don't spend any time taming them and even then, some of them just aren't very friendly and may never be tamed at all. 

So what we're doing with Hugo is actually pretty new, rare and special. There are a few other people with tame monitors on Youtube, but you won't find an awful lot of really tame, friendly ones on there, which aren't grossly overweight or reported dead by the people posting these videos. There's one guy out there who takes his bosc monitor for walks around the park with people's dogs and even sets up toys for him and everything, which is really fascinating to watch, but he seems to be a rare exception.

This one behaves a lot like our Hugo. Hugo likes playing with shoes and will do a tug of war with you, so monitor lizards really seem to be a bit playful. Who would have thought? 

I like to believe that 50 or so years from now it'll be perfectly normal for people to have a monitor lizard around the house like a cat or a dog. Hugo is living proof that it's perfectly possible if you take the time to tame them. And hey - we've done it before it was cool!

Our other main source of entertainment this Christmas was the Xbox360 owned by Claire's aunt. For two reasons: Red Dead Redemption and Xbox Kinect. You'll be well-aware that RDR is an absolutely amazing game, which I've only avoided because I hate console exclusives, especially when they're made by companies, who have been known to release their games across all platforms. But since it was already there and running... and owned by Claire's aunt, of all things! I was seriously surprised!

I've played a racing mission of sorts, where I had to steer a horse and carriage across a race track against a bunch of AI opponents, which were all easy enough to beat. The controls, however... the whole thing usually ended with me wrecking the damn cart or getting my horse stuck in some bush. I managed to win it eventually, which was pretty fun. There was a similar event where I had to steer a cartload of corpses around the place whilst fighting off a bunch of bandits, who kept torching the damn thing. Took me a while to figure out how to shoot those fuckers with a controller, but I got the hang of it eventually.

But then... Kinect Sports. Fuck! Dear god!

Claire's aunt wanted to show us Xbox golf. So she had to tell the Xbox to launch the game. Actually fucking tell it. See, that's the thing people forget when they watch Star Trek. It actually feels pretty fucking awkward when you're supposed to talk to your hardware, especially when people are watching. Let's just say that it all ended with half a dozen people shouting "Xbox! Golf! Xbox, play golf! GOLF!" We gave up in the end. Nobody managed to even launch the damn thing. To be fair, watching how much it sucked and how it was downright impossible to do something that would have taken one or two button-presses with a controller was more entertaining than any game could possibly ever be. 

Also, Warframe. They've released a cat-themed berserker warframe. How fucking funny is that?

Cat ears, cat claws... pretty neat ass for a space ninja cyborg thingie, too!

The new warframe is pretty broken and shit, but given my online presence and everything, I can't just ignore this one.

Christmas is over. I'm a bit sad. I had lots of fun.

-Cat