Bush tucker

Barni for lunch. According to this guy, you can eat everything on a barni (goanna) except the claws and the head. We'll see. Today.

It's G-man's birthday and his main job this morning is to dig a fire pit to cook the bugger. Yesterday Barni stole his last egg. He's been practically hand reared and would have died of heart failure sooner or later, from the high cholesterol diet of pilfered eggs. He's not the only offender - there must be a dozen living in the gully beside our house. I've seen 6 at once, two in the chook dome fighting over the eggs, being watched by an audience of four others.

This one found himself cornered in Nana's cage. We didn't mean to kill him, just give him a dissuasive belting as he came busting out of there, but G-man was a little too accurate (lucky) with the stick and well, now it is cleaned and gutted in the fridge, stuffed with lemon scented tea tree leaves and parsley. Can't let perfectly good protein go to waste. Besides - he is the old man of the gully and he won't be missed by the smaller males. It'll give them a chance to mix the gene pool up and strengthen the local line.

Really looking forward to this one. I can't believe how squeamish people are about eating reptiles. We eat fish, practically reptiles, as are turtles and bloody chickens - they look really reptilian without feathers. Indeed, the outer skin of the barni which has to be singed off before cooking, smells like burning hair. Must be the same cellulose substance as our own. While I was gutting it, unsure of the precise placement of internal organs, it occurred to me that we are not really very different from reptiles at all - red blooded and pink inside; a very elaborate tube worm. Preparing an animal for consumption is as up close and personal as you can get with a fellow creature and I must say, the goanna is beautiful, complex and I hope, delicious.

Hope our reptilian overlords don't find out.