Dandy was the only lizard I have known that would genuinely play with you. If he was lying on the sand, and you let your hand creep slowly towards him, as though you were stalking him, he would watch you, his eyes bright, his head on one side. As soon as you were close enough, he would suddenly whip his tail round, give you a gentle bang on the hand with it, and then scuttle away to a new position; you were then expected to repeat the whole performance. That this was real play I have no doubt, for the blows he dealt you with his tail were very gentle, whereas I have seen him bash another lizard with it and not only send it flying but draw blood.

Not long after we got Dandy, we had trouble with teguexins. These are large, handsome, and very intelligent lizards from South America. They can grow to about three and a half feet in length, and their skin is beautifully patterned in yellow and black. They are quick-witted, belligerent creatures, and the female we had was quite the most vicious in the reptile house. Tegus, as they are called for short, have three methods of attack, all of which they employ—together or separately—cheerfully and without any provocation. They will either bite, scratch with their well-developed claws, or lash you with their tails. Our female preferred to start hostilities with her tail. As you opened her cage she would regard you with obvious dislike and mistrust, inflate her throat and start to hiss, and at the same time curve her body into a half-moon shape like a bow. Once your hand came near enough, she would suddenly straighten out, and her tail would lash round like a stock whip. If she found that this method of defence did not deter you, she would run forward and try to grab you with her mouth. If she succeeded, she would hang on with the tenacity of a bulldog, at the same time bringing up reinforcements in the shape of her sharp, curved hind claws, which could tear chunks off you. I did not think this tegu’s character was an exception. After a fair amount of experience with tegus in their natural state, I had come to the conclusion that they were by far the most evilly disposed of the lizards, and were, moreover, so fast and intelligent that they were a force to be reckoned with when in captivity.

We were always suffering at the hands, or rather the tail, of our female tegu, and so it was with somewhat mixed feelings that we discovered her lying dead in her cage one morning. I was puzzled by her sudden death, for she had appeared to be in the very pink of fighting condition, having bitten me vigorously only a couple of days before. So I decided to do a rough post-mortem and try to find a clue to the cause. To my astonishment, on opening the stomach, I found a huge mass of whitish substance, not unlike fish roe, which I took to be a gigantic growth of some sort. Wanting to find out about this mysterious growth, I shipped the body off for a more detailed and expert post-mortem, and awaited the results with interest. Finally they came through. They were terse and to the point: the mass of white substance had been not a growth but a large quantity of pure fat. The lizard had died of heart trouble brought on by this fatty condition, and it was suggested that we feed less abundantly in future. On reflection, it was plain, for in the wild state tegus are very active creatures. Therefore, if you confine them in a limited area and give them a rich and continual food supply, they are bound to become over-fat. I vowed that the next tegu we obtained would be treated very differently.

Our chance came not long afterwards, when a dealer offered us a pair. On arrival they turned out to be wonderful specimens, well-marked and with glossy skins—the male with a great, heavy head and fleshy jowls; the female with a longer, more slender head. Contrary to our expectations they did not prove to be typical tegus at all. Instead of being fierce and unhandleable, they were as tame as kittens, and liked nothing so much as to lie in your arms, being gently rocked, and drowse off to sleep. If you went and stood by their cage, they would make the most frantic and flattering efforts to climb through the glass and into your arms. Apart from these bursts of social activity, they showed little desire to do anything much, except to lie around in abandoned attitudes, gazing benignly at any human beings who happened to be around in the reptile house.

As a result of all this feverish activity, of course, they grew fatter and fatter, and, viewing their increasing girth with alarm, we decided that something would have to be done, or we would have another couple of heart failures on our hands. The answer was exercise; so every morning Shep would let them both out to wander round the reptile house while he did his work. To begin with—for the first two or three days—this worked like a charm, and the tegus, breathing heavily, pottered about the floor for a couple of hours each morning. Then, however, they discovered that by climbing over a low barrier they could get into the tortoise pen, over which hung an infra­red light. So each morning when they were let out, they would rush short-windedly over to the tortoise pen, climb in, and settle themselves under the infra-red light and go to sleep. The only answer to this was to cut down on their food, and consequently they were dieted as rigorously as a couple of dowager duchesses at a health resort. Needless to say, they took a very poor view of this, and would gaze plaintively through the glass as they watched the other inmates of the reptile house enjoying such delicacies as raw egg, mincemeat, dead rats, and chopped fruit. We hardened our hearts, though, and continued with the diet, and within a very short time they had regained their sylph-like figures, and were much more active as a result. Now we let them eat what they like, but at the least sign of corpulence back they will go to the diet until their size is respectable again.

The one reptile-house inhabitant that never seemed to become overweight, no matter how much he ate, was our dragon, known as George. He was a Guiana dragon, a rather rare and interesting kind of lizard from the northern parts of South America. They measure about two feet six inches in length, and have large, heavy heads with big, dark, intelligent eyes. The body and tail are very crocodile-like in appearance, the tail being heavily armoured and flattened on top, whereas the back is covered with heavy scales which are bean-shaped and protrude above the surface of the skin. The colouring is a warm rusty brown, fading to yellowish on the face. They are slow, thoughtful, and attractive lizards, and George had a very mild and likeable character.

Probably one of the most remarkable things about Guiana dragons are their feeding habits. Before George arrived we had read up all we could on the species, but none of the textbooks were very helpful. However, they seemed to be perfectly normal lizard-type creatures, and so we thought that their diet would be similar to that of any large carniverous lizard. When George arrived he was petted, admired, and placed reverently in a large cage prepared for him, with a special pond of his own. This amenity he appeared to appreciate fully, for the moment he was released into his quarters he made straight for the pond and plunged in. He spent half an hour or so squatting in the water, occasionally ducking his head beneath the surface for a few minutes at a time and peering thoughtfully about the bottom of the pond. That evening we gave him a dead rat, which he regarded with considerable loathing. Then we tried him on a young chicken with the same result. Fish he retreated from as if it were some deadly poison, and we were in despair, for we could think of nothing else that he might like.

Just when we were convinced that George was going to starve himself to death, Shep had an idea. He fetched a handful of fat garden snails and tossed them into George’s pond. George, who had been sitting on a tree trunk at the back of the cage looking very regal, eyed this floating frothing largesse with his head on one side. Then he came down to the pool, slid into the water, and nosed at a snail, while we watched hopefully. Delicately he picked up the snail in his mouth and, throwing back his head, allowed it to slide to the back of his mouth. Now that his mouth was open I could see that he had the most astonishing teeth I had ever seen in a lizard: teeth that were, of course, perfectly adapted for eating snails. Those in front were fairly small, pointed, and inclined slightly backwards. These were the grasping teeth, as it were. Once they had hold of the snail, the lizard threw back his head so that the mollusc slid and rested on the teeth at the back of the mouth. These were huge, shoebox-shaped molars with carunculated surfaces which looked more like miniature elephants’ teeth than anything else. With the aid of his tongue, George manoeuvred the snail until it rested between these ponderous molars, and then closed his jaws slowly. The snail cracked and splintered, and when he was quite sure that the shell was broken he shifted the whole into the centre of his mouth and, by careful manipulation of his tongue, extracted all the bits of broken shell and spat them out. Then the smooth, shell-less body of the snail was swallowed with every evidence of satisfaction. The complete process took about a minute and a half, after which George sat there for a bit, licking his lips with his black tongue, and musing to himself. After a time he leaned forward and daintily picked up another snail, which he dispatched in the same manner. Within half an hour he had eaten twelve of these molluscs, and we were jubilant, for, having now discovered George’s preference, we knew there would be no more difficulty in keeping him.