Wildlife Warrior

I was taking Ella to nursery one day last week when I came across a lizard on the stairwell. Not one of these blue-tongued lizards, you understand, just a little lizard.

Anyway, after eleven months down under I've become much more accustomed to the wildlife, so I thought what would Steve Irwin do? and began furiously bashing at the step with Ella's pink rucksack, which might not have been exactly what Steve would have done, but it certainly gave the right message to the lizard.

The lizard then threw himself down two flights as though in some sort of suicide bid, though it wasn't a very successful suicide bid because he ended up dazed and confused on the ground floor but still managed to move his scaly little arse towards the door when he saw me coming. A wildlife warrior I may not be, but that's the third creature I've spared in the last three months, all in the name of the crocodile hunter, Australia's national hero.

So today when I did see an enormous blue-tongued lizard, I was blown away by how gorgeous he was and how the miner birds (yes, that's how they spell it here) were teasing him as he crossed the road in Centennial park; his enormous electric blue tongue swiping at them whenever they pecked him. I couldn't believe he was just ambling across the road - you should have seen the size of him, like the size of a ferret.

And when I slowed down the car and drove alongside him, the miner birds stayed away and left him alone and I thought what would Steve Irwin do? and I couldn't decide whether he'd let the birds carry on pecking at him, you know, because that's the law of the jungle, or whether he'd say the lizard was a silly arse for exposing himself on the road and he'd try to relocate him into the long grass where the birds wouldn't spot him so easily.

Anyway, I wasn't about to stop the car and relocate him myself, so instead I drove alongside him as he walked along the curbstone, stubbornly refusing to retreat from the side of the road back into the grass because he was quite enjoying the novelty of having a Honda CR-V as a chaperone and looking back at the birds whispering nur-nur-nur-nur-nur, or something like that. And I trailed him for ages and in the end I wound down the window and started leaning across the passenger seat making hissing noises, which didn't scare him off but did scare Ella, especially when I hit the curb because I wasn't looking where I was going.

I lost patience with him in the end and called out that he was a bloody idiot and was going to get himself killed. And just as I did I realised I was being observed by two of Sydney's yummiest mummies, neither of whom would have been seen dead shouting at a blue-tongued lizard out of the passenger side of their car.

I still don't know what Steve Irwin would have done. The only two things I do know are that (a) eleven months as a Sydneysider and I'll shout abuse at anything, human or animal and that (b) the birds continued harrasing the lizard after I drove away, so my efforts were in vain. Sorry Stevo mate, but I tried.