My Imaginary Pet Komodo Dragon, Wayne

There are two animals above all others that I am obsessed with, and I think perhaps, tellingly so. The first one is Architeuthis aka the “giant squid.” I love the fact that no one has ever seen a live one, that they can grow up to 120 feet in length, have enormous beaks and eyes the size of manhole covers. They live 3000 feet below the surface, which obviously makes them difficult to pick out of a crowd of blackness. But the best thing about him/her/it is that it could strike fear, invisibly. Unlike, say, me. The only time I strike fear is when I’m squeezing down the aisle on an airplane and passengers are next to an unoccupied seat.

Recently, sketchy footage of one peering up from the murky depths has appeared on an Animal Planet show called “MonsterQuest” and it actually gave me chills. I watched it about ten times. Slow motion. Super slow motion. Then regular speed. GG, on the other hand, was unimpressed with its size. Looking up from a magazine she thought it looked “tiny.”

I became frustrated, telling her she “didn’t get it” that the shot was “from way above it” and the squid was actually “a behemoth.”

“Look at its eye!” I shrieked. “It’s the size of a garbage can lid!”

She held her hand up and I stopped talking immediately. We have an understanding in such instances.

Moving right along (for both our sakes) is my other animal obsession: the majestic Komodo dragon, from the Indonesian island of…wait for it…Komodo. Go figure.

The Komodo dragon may be the world’s crankiest animal. Like champagne hangover cranky. Like me watching the porn bimbos and smiling monkey anchors on Fox News cranky.

It has mean eyes and appears to silently judge its neighbors in the animal kingdom. That is, when it isn’t spitting its toxic saliva onto them and following them around until they drop dead. Then the dragon moseys over and eats the hell out of them. At its own pace. Literally. It never really tangles with other animals—just gets close enough to hock a loogie and then shuffle along like, “That’s right, foal. Oh, it’s on.”

The first time I heard the Komodo dragon’s backstory I knew I had found an animal soulmate. (Sorry, Architeuthis.) For fun, I researched whether or not, a person in, say, the United States, living in a city like, say, New York City, could import one to live domestically. I went on Yahoo Answers and asked the question and, wouldn’t you know it, someone responded very quickly.

Turns out they are legal to keep as pets, and much of the toxicity in their saliva is from eating decaying flesh. Great news! So if I fed the thing a diet of pizza and General Tso’s chicken (like me) it wouldn’t be super-toxic, just dangerous and unhealthy. And irritable(r).

Seriously, I wouldn’t do it. Saliva is a non-starter for a germaphobe. Now, you add the toxicity into the equation, coupled with the potential to become paralyzed and slowly consumed by your pet, and you can’t help but realize that ownership would have some serious drawbacks.

Still, I always imagined how having one would strike fear into the hearts of pushy dog owners. George’s Dog Run in Washington Square Park would become George’s Dog Run for Your Life. The balding man-dwarf with the pit bulls would be quaking and those yippy dogs would be put in their place: a little wooden shoebox. (Joking…)

So anyway, the other day, it was raining hard and for some reason I thought, “Man, I’d hate to walk a Komodo dragon outside today.”

Then I spent ten minutes surfing the net to see what kind of rain clothing you could buy for a Komodo’s body type: boxy-long, in case you were wondering. There were all sorts of ensembles, but what really stood out was this bright red peaked rain hat that had a large star affixed to the front. An odd, impractical design for such a functional item, it looked like something Gandalf would be wearing in an animated dog (and cat) version of “Lord of the Rings”. If that makes any sense. But, well, it was perfect.

By now, I had silently named my imaginary Komodo dragon ‘Wayne’ after no one in particular. The one in my head looked like a ‘Wayne.’ He projected had a 60s vibe, despite being unclothed, and I don’t like wasting imaginary animal names, as people close to me can attest, so the name stuck. And then for some unknown (or ignored to hide a painful truth) I wrote the following on Twitter, using all 140 characters:

I was interested in importing a baby Komodo dragon and naming it Wayne. Today, Wayne would be wearing a rain hat. He would be angry at that.—7:53 AM Aug 25th via OpenBeak

I decided to see how many followers I could lose with such talk. Lo and behold, someone immediately retweeted it, helping me realize that my experiment would fail. You’ve been on Twitter. People say the stupidest stuff and you don’t stop following them. Usually, though, they are either a) hot or b) famous.

Emboldened, and while I waited for the rain to stop, I wrote this:

Wayne, my imaginary pet Komodo dragon, saw a few dogs at the dog run that he’d like to “play with.” And by that, I mean, “poison”.—10:03 AM Aug 25th via web


I am embarrassed to say that I couldn’t stop laughing. In addition to being my own worst enemy, I am also (on rare occasions) my biggest fan as well. The fact that only one person got the joke both intrigued and depressed me. I continued on for a day or two, occasionally updating Wayne’s whereabouts.

It all ended early Saturday morning when, on my way to the Jersey shore to reconnect with my college friends. I dropped this gem:

Wayne the Komodo is unclear as to why we are in NJ. I explained that it’s for a fantasy football draft. He wants to draft/eat Ray Rice at #4.—9:25 AM Aug 28th via web

Shortly afterward, I got a text from a friend. It contained two simple words, a comma and a period. It was, “Dude, stop.”

And I did. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid, although the person at Yahoo Answers with whom I corresponded briefly might disagree.