DO YOU BELIEVE IN DRAGONS Part 2

Do You Believe In Dragons   Part 2

 This is the second part of my four part series on dragons. I hope you enjoyed part one and that you will enjoy this section too.  The paintings here and throughout this series are my own artwork. 

You may have heard of the Monitor Lizard in Asia, Australia and in Kenya in Africa.  The Monitor lizard can literally be termed a dragon, so is the Komodo dragon in Indonesia and it is the only one I know of that carries the name Dragon.

We know the Komodo dragon is real, very, very real.  We have seen it.  We have photographed it.  We have found its carcass and studied it.  We know its average size is about ten feet in length, tip of the nose to tip of the tail, and that its average weight is about 350 pounds.     We know some other things about the Komodo dragon.  We know that it has strong legs and when running at full speed it runs about eleven miles per hour and does better in short distance than it does in the long run.  We know it has sharp claws and serrated, shark like teeth.  We know it is a meat eater, a carnivore.  We know its habitat, where it lives.  We know that the Komodo dragon is the largest known (confirmed) lizard on Earth.  I believe there are others, other dragons still to be discovered.  There are lots of places on our Earth and in our lakes and seas that we still know very little about. Who is to say there really is no dragons, that dragons are only imaginary creatures.

We know from fossils that have been found that the Komodo has been around for millions of years, perhaps since the world began yet humans didn’t even know it existed until100 years ago, give or take a few.    My grandmother was a young girl when the Komodo was first discovered by humans living today. She was born in 1897.  That really wasn’t so very long ago when you consider the whole scheme of things.  Back then people laughed when it was suggested that man could fly and now we can fly anywhere on Earth in a matter of a few hours and are flying in and out of space to other planets and we have discovered other planets and stars we didn’t know existed.  Our own planet, Earth, is still filled with a lot of the unknown.

There is another dragon that we know lives among us today.  We have physical and scientific proof it exists.  This one is called Caddy and Caddy is a great sea serpent mostly living on the west coast between southern Alaska and Oregon but another one much like her has also been sighted on the east coast in and around Saint Lawrence Bay.  I’ll tell you more about Caddy later. 

If these creatures aren’t enough to convince you, maybe Coelacanth will.  The Coelacanth was first discovered by modern man in the early 20^th century but natives from the region had been telling stories of a great fish, a monster in the sea for untold numbers of years, legend past down from generation to generation.  We now know Coelacanth is real, very real and extremely old.

The Coelacanth was first found near the mouth of the Chalumeau River in South Africa and soon after around the Indonesian Archipelago region and swimming around the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean off the coast of East Africa.  Though they had been being observed for centuries, the first one that I have read about being caught was in 1957 and the most recent was in 2000 just as the doors to the 21^st century were swinging open.

These giant creatures of the sea have been being described as dragons of the sea in local lore and legend for as long as humans have lived in these regions even if they have not been acknowledged as dragons or some ancient relic from the past, (perhaps a dinosaur who lives in the sea), by the world’s scientific community.  However, these dragons if you will, were thought to be extinct over 65 million years ago.  Surprise, surprise, surprise; they are still alive. 

We had already found fossils and knew they existed once upon a time.  Now we know they are still alive and well in our oceans today though on the endangered species list. They are protected.  Now that we know about Coelacanth, it makes you stop and wonder.  What else is out there?  Something is out there.  I know because I have seen something, a something I cannot explain.  Was it a dragon?  I don’t know what I saw but I know it was alive and very, very big.  I know I didn’t imagine it.  I know I wasn’t dreaming.  I know it is not just another of the stories I make up and tell or write about.  I definitely saw something out there and I know what I think it was.  

If we didn’t know about the Komodo dragon, Caddy and Coelacanth, and the monitor lizard until relatively recent years, what makes us think there could be no other such creatures somewhere on this planet?  I don’t think we know everything there is to know about Earth either, not by a long shot.  Just because we have not captured any other dragon or a living dinosaur, know nothing about them; it does not mean that it does not exist out there somewhere.  Just because I haven’t seen it does not mean it is not real.  I have never personally seen a Komodo either but I don’t doubt that it exists.  If you happen to take a trip to the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia you may actually get to see a live Komodo dragon but be very careful that you don’t become lunch. 

Should you be visiting Australia you may run into another little creature, a dragon that shrunk, perhaps.  Well, maybe.  This is all conjecture because of a bit of folk lore I heard.  My grandfather-in-law told a story about a giant dragon that lived in Australia. Now my grandfather-in-law liked to embellish his stories a bit, I’ll admit that but he swore up hill and down that there is a dragon in Australia that is covered with horns and can be a threat to anything that moves.

Apparently some distant relative, a great-great uncle several times removed had been a sailor on one of the ancient ships that had sailed to this land down under where this horrifying lizard-like creature covered with horns was discovered.  It had been a most frightening experience.  It was a horrible thing and it had chased them into the sea and back to their ship.  There had been hundreds of them, a whole army of monstrous dragons chasing them.

Okay, this tale caught my attention even if Grandpa was telling the tale with a twinkle in his eye.  Could there really be such a creature?  I decided to check.  Believe it or not, there is and it really does look like a ferocious dragon out of some book of fairy tales and fantasy.  I read everything I could find about the animals that live in Australia and checked out its ancient history and geography, the legends of the Aborigines. 

After all, Australia is the only natural habitat for certain other species, the kangaroo for instance.  We are all familiar with the Kangaroo.  Maybe Australia had a dragon living there, maybe more than one.  Maybe it still has.  I’ve heard rumors. 

I read a couple articles about a sea serpent that lives off its shores and ranges from Australia to New Zealand.  The right whale is back.  Folks used to think that was a sea monster of some sort.  There might just be a dragon, a real, live dragon. Then again, maybe not.  They have some very strange animals living there.  Well they seem strange to me but probably not to the people who live there.  I didn’t discover anything I would really consider to be a dragon aside from the Monitor Lizard or maybe, giving it the benefit of a doubt, the creature my grandfather-in-law described in his tale but I did learn some interesting things about a lot of creatures I knew nothing about.

The next time you visit Australia, keep your eyes open for the Thorny Devil Lizard, this little fellow really does look like what some folks imagine a real live dragon to look like but don’t worry, it won’t eat you and it does not breathe fire.  Actually, it probably is not a dragon of any sort at all but it qualifies in the minds of some folks and in folk lore and legend and the Thorny Devil Lizard is what I believe they saw.  The more they told the story, the bigger that lizard grew.  That’s what folk lore is. 

This lizard is only about six inches long, feeds only on ants and is really quite shy and harmless.  It is such an ugly little fellow it is almost cute.  However, early travelers to this land down under came home to describe it as a fierce giant of a dragon.  Maybe it was way back then and it shrunk.  Then again, probably not.  Oh what exaggerated imaginations we possess but then, there might be some basis for this.

So, okay the Thorny Desert Lizard probably isn’t and never was a dragon or if it is and was, it is a very tiny dragon, maybe a fairy dragon but that doesn’t dismiss the idea that dragons weren’t real or that some may not still exist.