Varanus Blog

One reason why I'm so fascinated with Hugo Bosc, our tame Bosc Monitor (or Savannah Monitor for you US folks, or Steppenwaran for Germans or Varanus Exanthematicus for all you ancient Romans) is how he was basically feral when he came to the shop as a baby. If you tried to touch him, he'd hiss, bite, whip you with his tail or, if all else failed, shit all over you. Which is the main reason why many people get scared and give up on taming them very quickly.

If you get yourself one of these guys, there's a good chance they were caught in the wild when they were very little. So unlike a cats or dogs, who are usually bred to be loyal and friendly and come from domesticated parents, your monitor lizard will be scared shitless of you and consider you a predator. The enemy. You have to be fought and avoided at any cost. Earning their trust will take hours of patience and training every single day, over the course of months, and even then there's no guarantee they'll ever become friendly.

Always use protection!

The first half year or so we wouldn't even feed, let alone touch Hugo without kevlar gloves. He would always attack and if he managed to catch a finger or the palm of a hand, you'd be "stuck" with him for the next ten minutes. He didn't let go and you can't exactly yank him off without risking injury to both yourself and the animal.

If you're familiar with this blog, then you'll know what he's very friendly nowadays, he roams the house as he pleases, takes baths and gets out of the tub by himself when he is finished and he hops on the couch for... well, I dunno. I guess it's about food or warmth rather than affection, but see for yourself:

He's still the most dominant animal in the house. He doesn't specifically hunt our cats, but if they're on the couch or in some other particularly nice spot and Hugo wants to be in that spot, then the cat has exactly two options: Fuck off or be destroyed. Case in point:

"I'll give you exactly two seconds to vacate my Xbox."

Cats are weak, useless and not very delicious, so he has little love or respect for them. However, if you're nice to humans, you'll get food, warmth and attention, so it's generally a good idea to tolerate their bullshit.

Make no mistake, though. He is still a wild animal. Something you'll notice the second you put a live insect in his tank or offer him a thawed mouse with tweezers. Behold!

The above video is nearly a year old and he is much bigger by now, but this is still the behaviour you have to expect from him around feeding time. If you're a rodent or an insect, you will be obliterated without remorse. To be perfectly fair, our common housecats aren't much different if there's any cheese, cream or bacon in the house.

Head to tail this guy is as long as your leg!

We took Hugo for a little walk today. Claire had to do a live food delivery to a shop customer, we wanted to do a little shopping, it was a nice and sunny evening, so I grabbed our giant lizard and we went on our merry way. And when the lady, who had been anticipating her delivery, saw that we had Hugo with us, well... holy shit. Seriously.

She plucked him off my shoulder pretty much the same moment and parked him on the huge balcony, that was her bosom. Absolutely not afraid of the giant monitor lizard's massive, sharp claws, his countless teeth or the fact that she had only seen him once before at the shop for about five minutes. She had to hold him and that was that. Man!
So Hugo was parked on her giant fleshy pillows of wobbly goodness and she stroked him and squeezed him and told us how she wouldn't hesitate to take him to bed with her at night. You know, the way some people take their kitty into the bedroom at night or let Rover sleep by their feet... it's a fun thought, but I wouldn't wanna risk rolling over him by accident and getting precious bits torn to shreds in the aftermath.

You could tell that she absolutely loved animals. This impressive fluffy cat appeared from the corridor and stood by the door to watch us and the lizard. The lady addressed him as the Captain, which was funny. "Please stay inside, Captain", she said. Amazingly, the fluffy captain sat down and stayed put as requested. Not exactly the kind of behaviour one expects from their cat.
She kissed Hugo when it was time for us to leave. On the head. You know... this guy:

Mwah!

I know this picture doesn't provide a very good look at them, but look at those claws. Look at those massive paws... feet? Hands? I don't know what the fuck they're called on a lizard, but they're huge. The claws are huge. And sharp. This guy can seriously bruise your arm just by whipping it with his massive tail. She kissed him on the head.

If I ever had the desire to kiss Hugo, I would, because I know him well enough to know he'd tolerate it. If I had only known him for the better part of five minutes... no, not so much. See, that lady absolutely loves animals, she immediately comes across as a very nice, warm, caring person, but there's no way in hell I'd want to do anything like that to a giant reptile, which I know absolutely nothing about. Maybe that's because I know how wild and vicious he used to be or because I know lizards have a tendency to be total dickheads, but there's no way I would have been so trusting. Of course that only makes it so much cooler. You know, how he puts up with things like that and doesn't freak out or attack or anything.

"Sooo... come here often?"

So I waited outside the supermarket whilst Claire took care of the shopping, made the usual amount of new friends (and reptile-hating enemies) and got the usual amount of silly questions, including my personal favourite: "Is he real?" Nope, he's 100% inflatable.

"He's an illusion, kid! As am I! Get out of the sun! Booooo~!"
Claire came out of the shop with a little treat: a nice pack of Italian ham. Simply because all three of us like ham. Hugo isn't exactly an ice cream lizard, you see. So we sat down on a bench, I went and tore up a slice of ham, gave some to Claire, tried some myself and then held a piece of ham in front of Hugo's face. I'll admit I was a bit nervous. You did see that video up there where he berserks the shit out of that mouse, right?

Hugo has been hand-fed before, I wouldn't have risked it if I had really expected him to eat my entire fucking hand, but there's always a certain amount of paranoia. What if he's too eager, if he catches one of my fingers because it looks and smells like ham, that kinda thing. He did something absolutely remarkable. He opened his mouth.
"Well duh", some of you might say. Look. He didn't go after the ham. He didn't approach it, he didn't snap at me, he didn't attack. He just sat there, mouth wide open, waiting for me to put the ham in there, so he wouldn't hurt me. And that's not just one seriously tame lizard, but it's fucking clever behaviour.

He can be pretty chilled out.

He just sat there, perfectly relaxed, perfectly happy and friendly as I split the ham among the three of us. Sometimes I had a slice, some of it went to Claire, then I'd offer him some and he'd just open up and say Aaaah. Except not literally, because he doesn't appear to have any vocal cords. Utterly fascinating.

Again, I have seen similar behaviour in many cats and dogs - who hasn't? The point is, those guys have been our faithful pets for an eternity and three days. We breed and train dogs to bring out their most desirable qualities and traits as pets. They do what they've been designed to do. But Hugo? For all we know, somebody caught him in the wild in Africa when he was just a baby, hatched from an egg laid by his wild mother. It took so many hours, so much effort, practice and a lot of learning and patience on both his and our part to get to this point.

Everyone is impressed and speechless whenever we take him down to the shop. Even customers with monitor lizards of their own are surprised to see just how incredibly tame, relaxed and friendly Hugo is. And he doesn't cease to amaze and impress me with his intelligence. Our cat has recently begun jumping the door handle. Hugo knows how to escape the tub when he's had enough of his bath. The race is on.

-Cat