A hunting story

April 2005

Well I'm happy to report that I have graduated to the big time in terms of hunting. I have now been involved in a proper Perentie chase. For those of you city slickers who don't know what a perentie is, it's a big monitor lizard. The one we saw today was about a metre and a half from head to tail. They are about the same colour as tree bark and have big, sharp, nasty claws designed to help them avoid being hunted and caught.
Up until now I have mainly been involved in the hunter/gatherer tasks that involve digging eg. Witchetty grubs, honey ants, sugarbag (although that involves more chopping than anything). I have also been involved in a number of successful goanna and dragon lizard chases, but until today the Perentie had been thought "too much for the white girl". Perentie is bigger and faster and more vicious than goanna. No more kids stuff, perentie is adult hunting! So perhaps it was because I found myself driving home with no Angela in the car and Loretta and Veronica (two 12 year olds) in the front that when we saw the perentie on the road in front and came to a halt just shy of it that I found myself being encouraged to join the hunt. "C'mon Lisa, go this way, do like this". The instructions as always came thick and fast. Time is a factor is hunting. The pesky lizards have a habit of running away! Although, I learnt today that the trick to keeping them in one place is to tell them a story. One does this by calling out in a high pitched voice "bee, bee, bee, bee, bee". When the perentie hears this sound it stops, amazingly, and parts of the neck which almost look like ears perk up. It is just as though the perentie is listening to you tell it a story!
The cunning hunters then use this moment of weakness to throw large rocks, wood and whatever else they could find to pelt at its head. While feeling the rush of my first real perentie chase I was still reminded of my junior place in the team. Veronica and Loretta circled around the perentie crouched under a tree. They commanded that I continue to 'do like this..bee bee bee' which I dutifully did. They commenced the rock hurling and my only other job became retrieving the rocks that they had thrown and missed. Loretta had a diret hit, but unfortunately was unable to capitalise on it because Julie, Angela's sister who had stayed behind in the car to look after the little kids arrived on the scene. Apparently the arrival of a third adult was enough to break the spell of the story i was telling and the perentie was off, outta there.
We tracked him for a while. Well I say we, but really it was Veronica and Loretta finding the to my eye indistinguishable footprints of the lizard while I trailed along behind searching the ground with no clues what i was looking for.
This time the perentie was the winner but it provided us with enough fuel for conversation for the rest of the journey home, a bit of post hunt evaluation, bragging about how we had it surrounded and we would have had it too if only Julie hadn't come along. Then the priceless suggestion for how to achieve success next time, "We should get crowbar and put'em in Toyota and next time we see perentie, we bin take that crowbar and hitem like that on perentie's head!" Yes Veronica, that sounds like a plan!