Australia is fucking with me. Seriously. It is fucking with me.
Remember when I wrote in passing that a fucking giant lizard appeared at my feet? Well, it happened. Again. That son of a bitch was about 3 inches away from my right foot!! And if you’re thinking “Chill, it’s just a small lizard.” No you mofos, it ain’t a small lizard. Malaysians would know this as a “biawak”. Let me just translate that for you non-Malay reading/speaking readers. “Biawak” means motherfucking hugeass lizards. Okay it does not mean that. I made that up. You’re online. Google it.
So anyways, let me re-enact that faithful day in which I almost had a near brush death experience (ie: being bitten by a biawak). I was walking to class with the Malaysian girl I’ve mentioned before hereby will be known as Mini Skirts. Cause that’s what she wears all the time. Mini skirts, then she bitches about how cold the lecture hall is- much to my amusement. Anyways I was walking to the lecture hall with her. We’re not taking the same subjects but somehow both of our classes are in the same building so we just went there together.
See, the thing bout my campus is…is that it’s in a forest. Now imagine a preserved forest if you could. Think of the beauty of Mother Nature and the importance of preserving it. Now imagine, again if you could that they cleared a huge chunk of land in the middle of it and built a university. Like a little town of its own, in the middle of the fucking forest. That’s how my campus is now. It is all sort of creepy at night. My only consolation is that they don’t have pontianaks in Australia. I’m very sure of this cause I had an in depth discussion with a friend over MSN and by the end of it we came to the conclusion that Pontianaks cannot fly that far over the sea and find me in Aussie.
God, I hope that’s true.
Anyways back to the story, right so there are trees everywhere. Bushes, low hanging branches and little pathways in between buildings. FYI, there are exactly 81 buildings on campus. Having a lecture in Building 32 and then a tutorial in Building 68 right afterwards with only 10mins gap is a wwwwhole lot of fun. I’m still in the process of perfecting my speed walking skills. In the middle of walking towards the lecture, Mini Skirts suggested that we should take a shortcut. We could walk on the fully pavement way or we could cut across the little paths with the bushes. Cause I was too lazy to walk that much I decided that yeah, this was a good idea. And then the nightmare begun.
I was walking along the path, chatting about something or other, feeling the lovely autumn breeze on my skin and the rustle of my skirt against my knees and thinking to myself “Oh my, what a lovely weather. We never get it this lovely in Malaysia” when I sensed movement at my feet. I looked down and there it was. A fucking biawak by my feet. It was like 3 inches away and I was wearing these open toes gladiator sandals. Sonofabitch!!!! It was about 3 feet long, black skin with green stripes. Green stripes!!!!!!!!!! And it was by my feet!! Dude, I didn’t think long. I screamed and I fucking ran out of there. I remember pulling up my skirt and running cause I was wearing on of those knee lengths, 50s style skirt. Mini Skirts didn’t know what was happening. She heard me screamed so she screamed too and started running. Fuck man, we covered what was supposed to be a 15mins walk in under 5 mins. By the time got to a somewhat “safe” place we were huffing and puffing and at the same time, a security guard was around. He hurried to us and he was like
“Are you girls okay? Did someone attack you? Was it the flasher?”
FYI, apparently there was a flasher round campus area. Hiding in the bushes and jumping out at random intervals to flash girls. No dude, seriously. They sent out an email to everyone’s student email. Campus Security thingie. So I was like
“No no, biawak. Big fucking biawak. By my feet.”
He stared at me. Mini Skirts eyes were bulging out “A biawak attacked us?”
“Miss, what’s a biawak?”
“Ohhhh a lizard. Big fucking lizard. Black, with green stripes. Sharp teeth. OMG, so scary.”
“Ooohhh a Goanna. That’s allright. I thought it was the flasher. Oh lizards are fairly common round these parts. They’re allright. Won’t harm you one bit. Unless you have meat on you.”
“Why was it by my feet?”
“He probably wanted to get to class too.” Then he laughed at his stupid little joke, pats me on the back and told me that it’s all allright.
Sonofabitch.
It was safe to say that I was traumatized by it all. Had nightmares that the biawak was eating my feet for 2 nights afterwards. Then over the weekend, Mini Skirts and I went to the museum. Yeah, the museum. Hey man, I have only been here for 2 weeks. I’m doing the whole tourist thing. And then there it was on the wall, a display of the same damn lizard that attacked me. Okay...maybe "attacked" is a strong word. Let's go with "ambushed". A display of a lizard that ambushed me. Much better. I found a person who works there and she actually went through some books to find some information for us. And here it is, it’s a Lace Monitor. And for your viewing pleasure this is how a lace monitor looks like:
Now tell me if you wouldn’t run screaming into the night if you saw that thing by your feet too. I mean fucking A Scott, I already have lizard issues as it is. And this mofo….according to the wiki page is venomous.
I am scarred for life now.
