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Gila monster
Last updated on Wednesday, January 01, 2003
down a wash in the Sonoran Desert, I rounded a corner and stopped abruptly. Atop a boulder directly in front of me was a truly enormous lizard. Its warty black and pink skin covered a body as large around as my forearm, and nearly two feet long, with a fat tail and stumpy legs. The lizard opened its mouth, revealing a double row of sharp, pointed teeth, and hissed loudly. I jumped backwards, startled: a Gila monster!
Gila Monster. Photo courtesy Byron Wright New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service Gila monsters and their cousins, Mexican beaded lizards, are the only two venomous lizards in the world. These "monstruos" - monsters, in Spanish - rely on a very simple venom-dispensing method. They bite their victim and hold fast; glands under the skin in their lower jaw secrete venom, which drips into the wound. Gila monster venom can kill small animals. In humans, the venom is severely painful, and causes swelling, nausea, and weakness, but it is not fatal.
Gila monsters are deceptive. They look and sound horrific, but these monstruos are nine-tenths bluff and bluster. Their bright colors shout, "Beware - I am venomous!" Their hissing stance and stout body says "Back off!" But a Gila monster's usual response to a threat is to lumber away. It bites only as a last resort.
It is not easy to see a Gila monster. These big lizards spend nearly all their lives - over 95 percent of their time, according one study - snoozing in rocky or earthen shelters. But Gila monsters move around through the year, picking their dens to suit the season: In winter, they select south- or east-facing crevices; in spring, they choose for morning sun and afternoon shade; in summer's heat, they take to the earth in burrows that they dig themselves or find abandoned packrat mounds. Monstruos return to the same crevices and burrows year after year.
Gila monsters are least active in winter, when food is scarce: they snooze and metabolize the fat stored in their sausagelike tails. A monstruo emerging from its den in spring is hungry. It lumbers off, on the hunt for food, but not just any food. Gila monsters' taste runs to tender young animals or eggs, snatched from nests on or in the ground: baby cottontails, ground squirrels, and baby birds; bird or tortoise eggs; and young lizards. When a monstruo kills suitable prey, it eats - a lot. The big lizard consumes up to half its body weight in one meal, then waddles away. Fat stored from one stomach-filling feast can maintain a snoozing lizard for a year or more - until food is plentiful again.
I feel lucky to have seen of these astonishing monstruos. If I never see another one, I am glad to know that they are there, snoozing through their lives in between feasts.
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