This journal is a tribute to my 'familiar,' an Australian Eastern Water Dragon (Physignathus lesueurii lesueurii) affectionately known as "GunGun" (has a strange pronunciation - closest 'english' pronunciation is like the "gon" in "dragon.")

(Pictures uploaded to my gallery)


Origins of the name:
Yeah, a strange name, but when he joined the family, he was a few weeks old hatchling - and it is practically impossible to tell their sex until they are around 1 year old. (unless you stick a probe in their vent and fish around, which has a risk of harming the lizard - it's just plain barbaric!)

I was determined that he wouldn't get one of the stereotypical names (Puff, Smaug, Draco, Godzilla) given to most dragon lizards, and my own 10 month old hatchling came up with the solution. His strange way of saying "Dragon" was "Gun Gun." It was a unique and unisex name, so it stuck!


Strange Name, Strange 'Owner', Strange Personality
And 'unique' was a good way of describing him. For the first couple of years of his life, I referred to him as 'my scaredy dragon,' who was literally afraid of his own shadow!

One of the funniest episodes that highlighted this was when he was approx 3 years old; I had the opportunity to get him a vivarium companion - a young female water dragon. Because there was a remarkable size difference, I wanted to see how he would react to another lizard. Normally you have to introduce other lizards slowly, as water dragons get quite territorial. Given his extremely timid nature, I thought I would see how he would go with a more direct introduction.

So, I went into the back yard and gathered up several lizards (my yard is a 'reptile sanctuary' in that I leave food out for the wild lizards, never use poisons and leave lights on to attract moths for the geckos).

From this selection, I took the biggest skink and the biggest gecko (released the others right back where they were found) and placed them in GunGun's vivarium - staying right on hand to intervene, should he decide they were food!

The gecko immediately climbed the walls of the vivarium and hid. No surprise there.

GunGun quickly stood up proudly, his snout high in the air, his bright red belly scales showing off just how big and tough of a specimen he was...

...And then the skink moved!

GunGun ran away so fast that he crashed straight into the side of the vivarium & began frantically searching for a way to escape from the threat!

To put this in perspective, GunGun would have been 2' long at this time, whereas the skink was about 5" - about 1/3rd the size of GunGun's tail!

His introduction to other lizards a bust, he remained a bachelor for the rest of his life. (I had planned a large outdoor enclosure for him and a mate, however it just didn't eventuate in time!)


Eeek! My food is moving!
One of his stranger characteristics was his preference, nay, insistence, on pre-killed food/prey. This came about due to a strange set of circumstances that included me running around the house, chasing 1,200+ stinking, chirping crickets! (No offence, Uncle Kage!)

He wasn't quite 12 months old when I decided that going to the pet shop every week for a tub of live crickets was a pain in the arse (not to mention expensive. So I did the logical thing - armed with more knowledge of the mating habits of crickets that I ever really cared to know, (Hi Kage!), I set up an account with the national 'prey' breeder and ordered a carton of Adult crickets.

I had my breeding and 'general population' containers all set up before a rather amused freight courier arrived at my office with a carton of twittering crickets - wondering what the hell was going on!

(Knowing he was a Christian, I kept a straight face as I explained to him how the "Food Laws" in the Bible said that it is okay to eat 'locusts,' but not prawns, crayfish etc... And how they are great dipped in chocolate! He bought it, the cupid stunt!)

Anyway, I opted for the standard concept of using flyscreen wire to cover the container (to ensure adequate airflow.) Alas, I didn't check on what sort of flywire I had...

(Did you know that a thousand crickets can chew right through nylon flywire in about 30 minutes? How long do you think it takes to catch said crickets once they are loose and jumping through your house?) Wrong! Double that...

A couple of days later, I came across several dozen that I hadn't caught...

Knowing how you are supposed to chill crickets in the fridge for 5-10 mins to make them slow & easier to catch, I was decidedly pissed RIGHT off with the little bastards - and chucked them in the freezer!

Now, Bearded Dragons are happy to eat pre-killed (and canned!) crickets... Water Dragons, not so much! In fact, people usually have to wiggle dead pinky/fuzzy mice in front of them in order to make them take it. (And there are battery operated 'wiggle plates' for this purpose, too!)

So, I pulled out the container of crickets and allowed them to thaw on a small plate before placing the plate in GunGun's vivarium. Once he saw what they were (and I had bashed him on the snout with one), he quickly ate every single one on his plate!

That first day, he ate nearly three times as many as usual (when they were hopping around). Note: reptiles only eat as much as they need to, and are unable to get fat! (more proof that proper Dragons aren't reptiles! This here dragon is a fatty!)

Since I had to 'gutload' them before freezing, I would do it day-by-day, but this sometimes led to the crickets reviving and hopping around the cage!

(Later on I 'gutloaded' all of the crickets and froze them en masse, which was a hideously depressing thing for a pacifistic dragon to do... The fact that I won't even kill a spider, yet mercilessly ended a thousand lives on a regular basis. But I had to, for him! (Being cold blooded, they would simply slow down & go to sleep, expiring in their sleep))

GunGun took to this non-chasing thing really well, quickly learning the point of the saucer and the meaning of the yellow lunchbox that housed his dinner. He would run to the dish in excitement every time he saw me coming with the yellow container.

Eventually he began to communicate his desire for food. If he was hungry, he'd walk up to the empty saucer and stare at me until I noticed. When I noticed him staring, he'd then turn his head to look in the dish, alternating between me and the dish until I got the hint.

If staring didn't work, he would walk up and sit in the middle of the dish, eventually stomping his front paw on it to get my attention. (Water Dragons have a rather 'civilised' method of fighting and confrontation, involving head-bobbing and paw waving/stomping. Far less aggressive than other species!)

But the funniest part was the day that I ran out of crickets and had to resort to the tub of mealworms that were in the fridge, while I waited for my shipment of crickets to arrive.

He had been standing tall and proud on his dish, stomping on it and staring down his snout at me, before I took the dish out and put a handful of mealworms on it and placed it back in front of him. The look he gave me while I was doing this could only be described as an "impatient glare."

He turned his attention back to the plate and opened his mouth, when suddenly the mealworms, now at room temperature, began to stir and move!

He cocked his head in a move resembling a double-take, looked up at me and stormed off, looking over his shoulder at me in what I considered to be horror and disgust!

That was the last day that I ever tried to feed him non-dead prey!

(which made it easy when he was bigger and started feeding on pinky mice. I didn't have to touch the disgusting, dead icky things!)


Surprisingly Civilised
I learned a lot from GunGun and, despite having a passion for reptiles all of my life, observed many unexpected behaviours in my little companion.

Toilet-training was the first thing that became apparent, and something that seemed fairly common amongst the species. Any time he needed to excrete, he would always go to his water bowl. This made cleaning his vivarium much simpler!

Even to his final day he did this. Of course, finding containers big enough to fit a 1 metre long lizard isn't the easiest thing in the world... Kitty-litter trays rock!

Another habit that was surprising was just how gentle he was. He liked to be hand-fed, so I would often hold a (pre-killed) cricket or something by a leg in front of him.

The thing that would surprise me though, was how he would walk perpendicular to my fingers, gently grabbing the cricket with his tongue so that he wouldn't come close to biting my fingers! Certainly not the expected behaviour for a 'cold-blooded, stupid reptile!'

In fact, he only ever snapped at me twice in his life - both during a time when he was a juvenile, and both leading to him cringing in remorse afterwards. I documented and referred to this period as "reptile puberty."

It's all about the attitude, baby!
He showed his attitude perfectly the first time I ever took him to the beach. He was about 14months old and I placed him in a cardboard box and went to one of the nicer (read: secluded) beaches, where I slipped on his harness and took him for a walk/run along the beach. He didn't actually care much for it.

The funny part came when we were leaving. I had placed him back in the box and sat with it on my lap in the car, when suddenly he began thrashing about wildly. Not wanting him to hurt himself, I opened the box and looked in.

He quickly jumped up, sticking his head and forepaws out of the box, then looked over his shoulder at me and THWAP! Whipped me across the face (right over the eye) with his really long tail.

It was a classic, definitely aimed act, leaving a nice welt across my face. He just sat there, glaring at me over his shoulder for putting him in the box!

After that, he rode in either a large cat carrier or just sitting on a car seat. No more boxes for him!

Another time, I went away for a fortnight (leaving someone else to care for him) and upon my return he rushed up, then turned his back on me and refused to look at me. Bloody sulky dragons!


As he got bigger, he outgrew his scaredy-dragon phase and just oozed attitude. Whenever I took him outside to run through the grass, he began to just sit there and survey his surroundings. When a bird flew by closely, he no longer ran, but looked up at it nonchalantly - he couldn't really give a toss. He knew he was bigger than them, and they just didn't bother him.

One day someone even brought their dog to our house, which went sniffing around the vivarium. GunGun cocked his head and watched the dog, which, after seeing the big lizard, turned and ran away! Little did it know that the lizard was an even bigger softy than me!


All good things...
Yesterday we let him have a run around outside, as we often did.

He watched complacently as our rabbit ran around, jumping over him, sniffing him and once even stepping on his tail as she did her mad "binkies" in the open. (she is a house-bunny too)

It was a gorgeous day, certainly not a hot one, and eventually I took the bunny back inside, letting him bask and explore the grassy yard - the same as we have done a hundred times before.

As the afternoon crept around, I went out to find where he had decided to hide - finding him hidden in the grass as usual.

But this time, when I picked him up, instead of wrapping his tail over my arm and 'clicking' at me, he was as stiff as a board and his head covered in ants. (and not the funny, incredibly intelligent silver dragon kind!)

Apart from the ants, there was no immediate indication of a cause of death. No signs of injury or trauma, nothing. In fact, if he hadn't been as stiff as a board, I would have thought he was playing dead to scare me - something he did to punish me on occasion when he was younger and I had put him in the bathtub for a swim.

I cleaned the ants off and placed him in his water dish, hoping to be wrong, but 2 hours later it was certainly confirmed!

GunGun, my soft, scaly 'cat,' was gone.

After breaking the news to my hatchlings, who didn't believe me at first (serves me right for quoting Red Dwarf too many times. It seems that David doesn't take me seriously anymore when I say "He's dead, Dave"), we buried him up at my parent's farm in our private little "Pet Cemetery," along with his favourite piece of bark.

(To date, none of the animals buried in the pet cemetery have come back to life and tried to tear our throats out, but it is early days yet!)



Farewell, little dragon.

(In memory of GunGun, Jan 2001 - Feb 2009)