Lunch Snake style

[raw-al]

I got this email from a friend.

Dinner in AZ

Ughhhhhh!!!  But quite fascinating!!
These pictures were taken by one of the road crew members at Cloudbreak, Arizona last week. It took a  total of 5 hours for the Desert King Snake to finish off the Goanna (Sand Monitor). 
As you can see, they put some stakes with flag tape on them plus a hazard/danger triangle up to help keep someone from running over them. Comparing the man's size to both the Desert King and the Goanna, the snake appears to be at least 8-feet and the lizard 5-feet.

[CitrusHigh]

that's awesome, I didn't realize desert kings or american monitors got that big!

[raw-al]

having a little trouble figuring out how to post.

[raw-al]

nutha

[raw-al]

last

[Haai]

Thanks for sharing. I find reptiles fascinating.

[CitrusHigh]

When I was growing up I wanted to be a herpetologist because I loved reptiles and amphibians. So that's probably the reason this picture struck me as odd when I read arizona. I believe this is australia and that is black headed python eating possibly a gould's monitor. Australia's snakes often have very distinctive looks and that's why I got to wondering, plus I've never seen a king snake look quite like that.

[raw-al]

Can anybody read the sign behind the guy. There may be a clue there.

[Techydude]

Did you eat it?

[Sitting Coyote]

Yeah, this is not a native American snake nor a native American lizard.  Looks like a black-headed python.  See this identifying photograph:  http://www.billabongsanctuary.com.au/aussie_animals/pythons.html

If this occurred in Arizona, then the snake must have been a released pet.  It more likely took place in Australia, and your friend is either mistaken or lying about the source of the images.

[CitrusHigh]

It's chainmail SC, there was no friend, that is just the copy and paste from the fwd. The very first thing that struck me as odd was the use of the word goanna, which I have only ever heard spoken by australians, or in reference to australian fauana. This has no bearing on the coolness of the post, I just like to keep the truth out there, that's why I offered the correction. There's enough misinfo out there already!

[raw-al]

Like all emails that get spread around sometimes things are modified.

That's the cool thing about the net. With such a range of people looking someone usually can catch errors.

[wodgina]

Definitely Western Australia 'Cloudbreak' is an iron ore mine here out in the desert, it's not a road worker but a miner next to the snake, I can tell by what he is wearing. The sign is most likely for an underground gas pipeline which powers many of the mines in the area. I used to work on a mine close by.

[CitrusHigh]

agreed raw-al, so many eyes and the truth will be there some where, if one can recognize it.

Thanks Wodgina for the wisdom, I feel kind of sheepish as a tracker that I didn't even check the fella out, he's got telling sign all over him!

[wodgina]

We call the monitors 'Bungarra's' which is the Aboriginal term for them. They get pretty big.