Here There Be Dragons...

February 20, 2025
Matching heat and humidity in the mid eighties--kinda like the Ozarks in August

 Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons,

for you are crunchy & good with ketchup!

~ Seen on a T-shirt, once upon a time...

Dragon stories can be found in nearly every culture, worldwide. I can't count how many different paintings and statues of St.George and the Dragon we've seen in Europe. The Vikings had their Jormungander, the world serpent. Chinese dragons are part of all their celebrations. Meso America and even aboriginal Australia recorded images of giant lizards. Were they all figments of someone's imagination or is there a basis in fact somewhere?

I stepped out on our balcony as we neared Rinca, the smallest of the three Komodo islands, and a whiff of sulphur was on the wind, a faint breath from some fumerole amid the sleeping volcanoes. The islands are rugged, rising like shards of basalt from the ocean and are punctuated by perfect cones that betray the land's volcanic past. The island is green and lush and quite...Jurassic.

If there truly are dragons among us, this is where they would live. 

 

There are, in fact, about 1500 dragons on Rinca, about 1600 on much larger Komodo, which also has a human population. No humans live on Rinca. Our guide Aloyisius was from Flores, the third island in the group. He says they have a few dragons from time to time because--gulp!--dragons can swim! 

Male dragons can live to be 50 years old, weigh 300 pounds and stretch to 10 feet long from tail to snout. Females have a life expectancy of 40 years. The dragons form no family groups. They are solitary creatures of very little brain without the endearing qualities of Pooh, the bear of very little brain. Mating season involves a good bit of fighting. Even females will fight if they aren't in the mood for love. "No" means "NO" in dragonland! 

The females lay a clutch of about 30 and buries them, then she abandons them for their 8 month incubation. However, as CS Lewis observed in his Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "There is nothing a dragon likes so well as fresh dragon." Even the dragon momma might dig up the eggs and eat her own babies before they hatch. And if the newborn dragons don't shinny up the nearest tree immediately after leaving the egg, they're likely to be eaten by any passing dragon. Once they reach the relative safety of the tree branches, that's where they live for the first few years of the their life, eating birds, monkeys and yes, other dragons that are unlucky enough to be smaller than they are. 

Dragons are an apex predator. Nothing eats them... well, except for their own canibalistic kind. They can run 18 KPH for short distances. They don't have venom in their bite, but they are so full of bacteria, some of which impedes clotting, any bite from a dragon results in bleeding to death. So even if a waterbuffalo escapes a close encounter with a dragon, it will still die a slow death while the dragon is free to follow the scent of blood at a deliberate, inexorable pace. An adult dragon can consume 35 kilograms (a little over 77 lbs) in a single meal.

When we first knew we were going to see Komodo dragons on this voyage, I shivered a bit imagining being protected from a dragon by a 90 pound park ranger with a stick. And while our guide Aloyisius has fended off dragons with a forked stick and a rope in the past, I was very glad to see that Indonesia's National Park service has developed this island in a way to make it easy for visitors to see the dragons without being in harm's way. There are raised walkways throughout the island and we were strongly cautioned not to wander off them. 

No worries, mate. I got quite close enough to feel I got my money's worth. 

If you ask my daughters they'll tell you I can't visit a museum or any point of interest without stopping to read the signs by the exhibits. To my surprise on Rinka, one of the signs told me that male dragons have not one, but two, penises. When I pointed this out to the DH, he said, 

"Hmpf!" which is a Norwegian expression that covers amazement or boredom with equal fervor. Then he added, "If that's true, seems like they'd look a lot happier than they do."  

Once they've fed, dragons basically just lie around unless it's mating season.

Speaking of what they look like, sorry for the lack of pictures. Our wifi is incredibly weak. I will add them as soon as I'm able. 

 P.S. Looks like we have a little more bandwidth, so I've inserted a few pics and here's the DH's photo montage!