They tell me that this is a monitor lizard. It does look similar to the monitors shown in that INCREDIBLE wildlife TV film about giant crocodiles "The Tides of Kiriwari". Get to see it if you possibly can, for even if you are a regular wildlife film buff I promise you will be astonished!

If you ignore the main feature: the crocodiles attacking and eating full grown wildebeest and zebras, there is a short bit about a three foot long monitor lizard catching fish in both the river and small puddles, using its body and tail to sweep across the pool in order to drive the fish to one end thus simplifying capture. Very clever in a cold blooded sort of way.

My own experience of lizards is small beer compared to that, and is confined to the house lizards that live in the Far East. My first night in the Philippines was in a small hotel, probably the best in the town, but somewhat primitive by western standards. I lay there in this strange country, listening to the sounds of the night through the barred but glassless window. Every few minutes I could hear the sound of a generator starting up, running for a few seconds, then switching off again. What on earth was going on? It was several days before I was told that the noise was generated by lizards.

The house lizards occupy most properties, both inside and out, in many Asian countries. They help keep down the mosquitos and are usually welcomed by the human occupants. They are small, about three inches long, and are very agile and quick, even when performing their cabaret trick of walking up the wall and across the ceiling. Their agility is not however perfect, and they occasionally fall off. One lady I spoke to recounted how, in her last year of school, one lucky lizard fell from the ceiling and down the front of her blouse. The resultant screams did liven up, and eventually terminate, the maths lesson. The lizard did not find it easy, in the circumstances, to count up to two.

On the second day a dead lizard appeared in the middle of the floor in my hotel room. It actually remained there, very visible, for about three days until the hotel staff finally removed it. It was not harming me so I did not bother to consign it to the trash. I still wonder though whether it crawled along the floor and died, fell from the ceiling and died, died on the ceiling and then fell, or was planted by the hotel staff to see what my reaction would be (I was probably their first ever western guest). I suspect the last alternative to be what really happened.

This is a good link for wildlife pictures......