When You’re Small in Stature But In Your Heart, You’re a Komodo Dragon

A little monitor lizard offers a lesson to humans about determination and having faith.

I keep saying that lizards have so much to teach us, and my amazing monitor lizard Liora keeps proving this over and over again.

Last weekend, something very amusing happened in our home. Liora is a Kimberley rock monitor and this species loves to eat a variety of insects in addition to monitor staples suitable for smaller lizards, like hardcooked egg and ground turkey or chicken. She’s fond of dubia roaches of all sizes, especially the little nymphs she snaps up like popcorn. But I also have some massive roaches from the hell, the kind that would prove a challenge for the average steeltoe, since they provide excellent nutrition plus enrichment.

Enrichment refers to the mental stimulation that highly intelligent reptiles require. It can involve play, problem-solving, working for their food, exploration, and so many other things that make reptile husbandry both fun and challenging for humans as well as our scaly companions.

Food that literally puts up a fight isn’t a good option for larger lizards, because feeding live rodents and small animals can hurt them and also screw up all that taming and socialization you’ve done. But it’s perfect enrichment for a smaller lizard like Liora, since live bugs are easily distinguishable from human hands.

Well, Liora met her white whale. It was actually a colossal umber roach that is the stuff of every New Yorker’s worst nightmares, but a white whale in the metaphorical sense. A reference everyone gets even if they never actually read Moby Dick.

The white whale was the biggest roach either of us had ever laid my horrified, and Liora’s excited, eyes upon. It grew unchecked in her hisser farm under her habitat to the point it cannibalized other hissers then it only surged in growth in her bioactive enclosure.

This thing was a BEAST. Absolutely gigantic!

To say that Liora relentlessly chased and chased that roach was putting it mildly. She ran after it like an angry mob of Swifties going to town on Ticketmaster. Thrashed it like she was tenderizing a pot roast.

Even though I have an actual steadicam I bought for filmmaking and wanted to practice with amazing Liora footage I got no shortage of, my ADHD-addled ass did not extract it from my equipment cabinet in enough time and my arm was getting fatigued recording her. I had to piece together multiple recordings and she was STILL at it! To make matters more amusing yet exhausting, The White Whale popped out of Liora’s mouth a few times and she’d pick it up again while it squirmed on its back, jamming it down her throat with the same fervor as Linda Lovelace.

So if you’re unfamiliar with varanids’ (monitor lizards) eating habits, whether they’re the two largest varanids on earth like Asian water monitors and Komodo dragons or small varanids like Ackie monitors, they just kinda gorge themselves but need to squeeze their necks to get that food down.

And she didn’t squeeze in time. She THOUGHT she had the White Whale taken back, but that beast practically catapulted from her triangular maw like it had some surprise wasabi on it.

To say that Liora’s pride was hurt was an understatement. She has a whole range of emotions and modes, and I could see that she was incredibly upset. She always prevails over hissers, extra-large grasshoppers, and other really big bugs! How could this one have run away from her after putting up such a fight?!

My poor baby was extremely upset. Reptiles operate in modes and I never saw her exit Huntress Mode so fast before.

When she goes into Needy Toddler or Cuddlebug modes, she runs to me via the glass doors. I was standing by the right side, watching her and giving commentary, and she flung her front paws onto the glass, eyes wide, as if to scream “Mommy! It’s not fair!” She ran crying to her mama and wanted comfort because of how upset she was, then she hid behind her rope wall all day in a pouting fit. Her pride was hurt more than her trachea.

But the next day, she curiously explored and went back to the same exact spot that leviathan hisser was hiding: she didn’t just dig it out and take it back like a sub sandwich, she eviscerated it like she was in a Saw movie with that roach.

Liora made the hisser PAY.

If you watched the reel all the way to the end, I think it’s important for you to know that the…stuff she squeezed out of this roach? She came back for it later and ate it!

There’s actually a valuable lesson to be gleaned from this little monitor lizard, gored roach guts and all.

My sweet little varanid was devastated when her big lunch somehow got away from her. She has a coconut hide toy that dubia roaches of all sizes have taken up residence in, a simultaneous perk and downfall of a bioactive habitat. But she could’ve gone after any of the slightly smaller but still sizable hissers in there, a very large dubia nymph, or the little ones I pop into her rock ledge cups.

Nope. She found her white whale and had her heart set on it to the point she expressly went back to where she found it.

I couldn’t record all 15+ minutes it took on the second try the next day, but just watching how determined my little dinosaur was filled me with this inspiration I don’t always get from people. This freaking BEAST was literally wider than her and it did not stop her!

For reptile geeks reading this, I’m not being hyperbolic when I point out Liora’s Komodo dragon type behaviors: the latter is arboreal when they’re babies, here’s a side-by-side comparison of both getting ready to air drop!

Liora isn’t as tiny of a baby as she was when I got her and she is becoming an absolute dinosaur puppy. But she’s still a little baby, and Kimberley rock monitors are what’s known as a “dwarf monitor” in that they don’t grow nearly as huge as black and white throats, croc monitors, Asian water monitors, and other massive varanids. She’ll reach about four feet at maturity but over half of that is her tail, which is already extremely long!

But this doesn’t stop her from behaving like the largest apex predator in the world and I think we all need to learn from this.

And when she failed that challenge the first time, she cried it out with her mama then by herself and took time to let it all out. Then the next day, she dug and dug until that she unearthed that massive shitbeast and learned that she needs to fold it like a taco so she can squeeze it down her neck and not see it again.

Just because you know you’ll never be the Komodo dragon of whatever you’re aspiring towards — career moves, artistry, physical fitness, dating — you don’t have to be the absolute best in the world. In fact, you’re going into it knowing you’re probably not going to be in that top 1%.

But like hell if my monitor lizard was going to wait til she was bigger before she pursued that white whale. She was bitter about the defeat, but got a victory on the second try (and an epic meal, at that).

You only need to be a Komodo dragon in your heart.