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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Komodo sought in brutal murder

Keeping up with the animal-on-human violence these days could get difficult. From Indonesia comes this story about a hapless trespasser in search of sugar-apples, a fisherman who bled to death after being mauled by one or more of the beasts.

"Attacks on humans are rare, but Monday's incident is the latest in a series in which the monster lizards -- which have forked tongues and fearsome claws --have killed or injured people."

One can only imagine an earlier scene scene mentioned in the article:

"In June last year, a group of divers who were stranded on an island in the national park -- the dragons' only natural habitat -- had to fend off several attacks from the reptiles before they were rescued."

Actually it was only one Komodo but hell, the image of hapless divers encircled by the cunning beasts is much more--cinematic. Sounds like something from a bad and garishly-colored science fiction film of the early sixties, with dragons animated in clay à la Clash of the Titans.

And what the hell are sugar-apples anyway?

1 comment:

  1. This sounds pretty horrifying! I wonder how fast Komodo dragons things are? They look so lazy in the zoo.

    Anyhow, I was under the impression that this fellow actually fell out of a tree before he was attacked by two Komodos, which makes me think he had a broken leg or something and couldn't run.

    I love this line from the CNN article: "The area was forbidden for people to enter as there are a lot of wild dragons." That sounds like it's straight out of Le'Guin's EarthSea books.

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