Ladies and gentlemen, please be introduced to the perentie. We had never seen nor heard of this frightening looking creature, but after seeing three of them in the last ten days I had to do a little Googling to find out what the heck it was.
Depending on who you talk to, the perentie is the third or fourth largest lizard in the world, right after the Komodo dragon and the water monitor. Your average one is, believe it or not, about five and a half feet long and weighs over 30 pounds. But I’m pretty sure the ones we saw were somewhere between the size of a pick-up truck and a T-Rex.
We were driving along about ten days ago when Jamie spotted our first perentie looking like he was doing pushups on the side of the highway. She hollered, “What the hell is that?” I turned the car around and she jumped out with her camera, but he was quickly scuttling away.
These suckers can move. I mean really move. Now that we’ve seen three of them scurry away as we tried to take their photos, I can assure you that I would not want to have an angry perentie chasing me across the outback.
Hell, I wouldn’t even want a happy one chasing me.