New Royal Mail Lizard stamps in UK

[Pavillios]

Just got my hands on the new Royal Mail Lizard stamps.....









I think they are only available for 1 day, April 1st.

 

[strewart]

Haha they look pretty cool. Does that last one really have a hard helmet on?

 

[Pavillios]

That last one does have a little plastic helmet on. I think he is wearing it as a precaution after hearing some of the comments made about the "silver" crests on those skink pictures I posted the other week!

I think the helmet looks so cool, that I may be putting helmets on all my new skinks. I figure I can just cut the heads off a box of 40K Cadian infantry, stick them on the skinks, and paint them yellow!

 

[Dalkarius]

That would be hilarious! Skinks with pre-cautious armor, lol.

 

[Pavillios]

It's odd how things happen. I obviously posted the lizard stamps as an April fools joke. I also posted them to a friend who lives locally. He took one look at the "Royal Mail Lizard day" stamp set and said "oh this must be to do with the national lizard stocktake".

This sounded even less plausible than my Lizard day stamp issue, but.........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7977971.stm

I looked at the web page, checked some of the links on it an there truly is a Lizard/frog stocktake going on in the UK.

Having accepted this, I then did not think it plausible that, as the web site says, there are such reptiles in abundance in the UK (not the most tropical place on the globe). Well I've now been proved wrong on that. My friend brought his 2 boys around to show me where, in my garden, I would find real miniature lizard men and the like. After only 5 minutes of lifting various flat stones on my rockery, one of the boys found what I thought was a snake. It turns out that it is a legless lizard. It was massive. About 10 minutes later we found another smaller one, and then a frog (which kind of hopped over towards us as if it feared it was going to miss out on something good the legless lizards were getting). There were also some small, maybe 2 inch long, lizards darting around the stones. They looked like large newts but were proper lizards. They would make excellent salamanders! If only we could catch them - they were fast.

The bad news is that my friend's 2 lads ran off with these amazing creatures so they take them into their nature class today.

The good news is that they have to release them back to where they found them, so I will take some pics later today.

All I can say is I am amazed such large reptiles are hoping and running around (perhaps not so much the legless lizard) in UK gardens. So, 3 days ago I was envious of other Lustria-Online users who were posting from more exotic places which probably have lizards everywhere. Now I find we've got some here in the UK.

 

[strewart]

Mmm lots of lizards around where I live, unfortunately most of them are adapted to living in or around the desert so they are usually boring brown colours rather than the cool brightly coloured lizards and frogs seen in pictures of rain forests.

 

[Pavillios]

I remember watching the film called Walkabout. Lots of Aussie desert lizards - but unfortunately all dead. The Aborignal boy kept killing them. He was even wearing loads of them around his waist, freshly killed with flies eating them.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07305/830062-42.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgWrVIPAzJo (26 seconds in for the Lizzies!)

The first time I watched that film I only remembered Jenny Aggutter's swimming scenes. I certainly don't remember any of the lads in school next day saying "cor....did you see that film with the lizards last night"!!!

There was a big UK to Australia emigration drive on at the time. I'm not sure if the Walkabout film put anybody off going. We got lots of scare stories about funnelweb spiders, snakes and some horrible squid type thing that luked in Aussie swimming pools. I always considered these would be worth suffering if all the young women walked about like Jenny Aggutter when it got hot!

I must get to Australia some day!

 

[strewart]

Funnelweb spiders are aggressive, but they are also only in one state. Snakes are more scared of you than you are of them, and blue ringed octopuses... Well, I would be more worried of the sharks.