Bohollow EnviroEd brings the wildlife to Nathalia for the Annual Bardi Gras

There was lots of lizard love in the air in Nathalia at the Bardi Gras on Easter Saturday! The Bohollow EnviroEd Team had lots of fun sharing our love of local lizards with everyone and it was wonderful to see so many people engaging with the reptiles who call our area home. Our lizards displayed their individual characters, particularly Basil the Bearded Dragon who insisted on trying his hardest to go for a walk on the grass unless he was attached to someone's shirt 🙂 Young and old alike all delighted in becoming more familiar with and being able to view, touch and hold three of our local lizard species, Shingleback Lizards, Blue-tongued Lizards and Bearded Dragons. Having them all together enabled people to learn to identify them easily, see their different behaviour and realise that all these species, although nowhere near as common as they once were, are all creatures we can still find in our bushland here. Rex, the baby Lace Monitor, otherwise known as a Goanna, made a few appearances and was exceptionally well behaved. Goannas are one of the more commonly seen and well known lizard species of Nathalia and the surrounding country areas of Northern Victoria. Also seemingly in decline, I am not sure whether they are seen more often than the other species purely because of their size, making them more noticable and easy to spot. Rex seemed quite amused by the large human 'Goanna' who dropped in to see her fellow lizards on more than one occasion. Our friendly Bohollow Snake Crew also received their fair share of love on the day. Marley, our large Woma Python, has a habit of winning people over but all the snakes attracted much interest and became personal favourites to those who got to know them. Monty, our young Murray Darling Python, helped to explain how his species has become very rare now in Northern Victoria and are listed as endangered due to habitat loss and introduced foxes. Another threat to these non-venomous snakes has been people as they are often killed despite being harmless and non-aggressive. Fear of snakes is something that many people have and Deb has always been one to hold that fear, although she sees the beauty in snakes and has never wished to harm them. Saturday was a massive milestone for her as she overrode her fears, completely stepped up to the role of reptile handler and by the end of the day was handling the snakes like a pro 🙂 Thank you to everyone who dropped in to say hello on Saturday and we hope you thoroughly enjoyed experiencing our native reptiles. I know we certainly enjoyed interacting with you all 🙂 A warm thank you to all those who placed a donation in our tin, every cent goes towards helping us to continue our wildlife rescue and rehabilitation work here at Bohollow.