Join the campaign: Reptile watching must be elevated to a national sport, and the pond is well on the way to a bronze medal thanks to Moorice and the Oz editorialist ...

The pond won't rest until reptile-watching is recognised as a national sport, up there with LOLcattery, hugely enjoyable, great fun and safe for all the family. (Certain exclusions apply: families liable for their own safety precautions; mental and physical damage worse than participating in a game of thugby league may result).

Why properly structured, it might even become an Olympic event and become a side attraction at the World Cup, and so take an honoured place in the perversion of all sports.

One caveat - let's keep the game amateur, no money should change hands, thereby ensuring that future generations will marvel at the memories, just as we marvel at the dodo ...

Look at the Bolter yesterday:

Aww, so cute. Look mummy, the reptiles are hugging each other after the scratching and clawing.

Well their master is coming to town dear, so they must be on their best behaviour.

But see child, note how this one is the most sensitive and prissy of them all. Oh sure, he can dish it out, but he can't take a little heat in the kitchen. Always playing the victim card, so uptight, petulant, fractious, sullen, sulky, testy, whiny, peevish, captious, caviling, crybabyish, pouting, querulous, waspish, sour and whining that there's not enough adjectives in the book to describe the sook. Such a wretched and deeply neurotic reptile.

But look how reptile watching improves your word play ...

The Graudian offers particular pleasures in the sport. The Weekly Beast has been going for some time now and it's remiss of the pond not to have celebrated a skilled proponent of the art of reptile watching. 

There's a splendid piece on Rita Panahi - warning, this vicious, savage reptile scratches and claws and is best observed through glass - and the sulky feuding sookish, the Bolter, as per above, and this on a very special reptile, pond favourite Prattling Polonius:

Gerard Henderson has made a career out of criticising the ABC. His tedious Media Watch Dog blog, now republished by the Australian every Friday, is packed with gripes about Aunty, which he says is bloated, left wing and hopelessly out of touch with real Australians. 
Hendo listens to and watches everything he can, searching for ways in which to lambast the ABC’s presenters as biased. So where does the grumpy ABC critic go when he has a book to sell? Why the ABC, of course. 
The Weekly Beast heard Hendo talking about Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man on Sydney’s 702 Drive with Richard Glover, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams and Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue all in one week. 
So we investigated a little further and discovered Hendo had been everywhere. He had also been flogging his book on Adelaide’s 891 Mornings, Brisbane’s 612 Mornings and Melbourne’s 774 Drive. Oh, and Lateline did a story last week, too. Let us know if you have spotted him anywhere else on that dreadful public broadcaster.

Yes, watching prattling Polonius in full featherless hypocritical flight always makes a wonderful sight, up there with the floating apartment blocks that soar over the pond's home each day. (And while at the Graudian, you can also check out Seven's hilarious new show, Reptiles Make You Laugh Out Loud).

And look what the reptiles are up to today:

Yes, they dragged chairman Rudd out of the crypt to berate the Labor party, but then the pond has noticed that in vampire movies, Count Yorga had no shame as he returned from the grave and went about his blood-letting business, as if he'd never gone away.

Meanwhile, the reptiles have obediently toed the line - notice the heading "Parties seek peace over expenses", as the mad monk wishes, as opposed to a headline screeching Tony Burke guilty of a serious rort.

The pond has no problem with rorters and rorting of all parties being exposed, it might lead to something being done about it. The pond would happily see some politicians head back of Burke at their own expense.

Of course Abbott was a serial and shameless rorter - dropping 10k in Tamworth without even staying the night - and wants the MAD to end, but the madder it gets the more the pond likes it, and Burke's behaviour was just one of many egregious examples, though none more egregious than Bronnie.

If the pond decides to join the FIFO partner on a trip to Brisbane to look at the toads - such nice creatures - the cost belongs to the pond and no one else (though we might manage to sneak into the hotel room and make off with the complimentary shampoo, soap and conditioner).  There are many people who do the FIFO thing, and who - like interstate truckies - are always on the move, and who do the hard dislocating yards, yet the sense of entitlement that litters parliament, the sense that only pollies do it tough and need their perks, is a remarkable thing to see ... all the more remarkable when the pollies take time out to deplore the culture of entitlement.

Never mind, look at today's splendid line-up of reptile offerings.

Now that's the sort of insight that rewards all reptile watchers.

Truth to tell, it puts the pond's own insight - Labor's agenda is to reward Tony Abbott with a second term in government - quite to shame. Who'd have guessed that Labor has an agenda to remove Tony Abbott in his first term?

Only reptiles, always ahead with the moves and the news.

In the end, the pickings were so rich, the pond had to resort to that childhood game of eeny meeny miny mo, catch a reptile by the toe. And if he runs up your skirt like a rampant Nundle goanna, scratching and clawing, your grannie will have endless tales to tell wide-eyed children (the pond has kept its distance from goannas ever since).

Luckily, as always, the long absent lord made an astute choice, but before we start we have to ask if everyone has cultivated a sufficient level of aerobic and anaerobic fitness, because both strength and endurance are required to get the best out of reptile watching:

Ah, you're an expert reptile watcher. You knew climate science would get in there somewhere, along with a mention of "warmist beliefs".

Really the best reptiles are the predictable ones - so much safer than joining in the running of the bulls.

But sssh, whatever you do, don't mention the phone hacking story, that would destroy the narrative, or Roger Ailes and Fox News, or any of the other loony tunes foisted on the world by the Murdochians, including Moorice "climate science is an international UN conspiracy" Newman himself.

Instead let's return to our resident raging reptile:

Was that fun kiddies?

Did you notice the usual words? Groupthink and "self-interested elites" are particular favourites, because Moorice is certainly not part of a self-interested elite.

Moorice is certainly not a member of a vocal minority, with a kool aid groupthink going on - no matter what the petulant Bolter might say - and a declining circulation for a rag picked up by maybe 200k or so people in a population of 24 million.

It could be argued that he's disappeared so far up his fundament as to have reached a place where the sun don't shine, but everyone into reptile watching should admire the fun of a man who was once chairman of the ABC berating the ABC for its failure. As if it's got nothing to do with him, a futtock of the first water ...

Truth to tell, it's a relief. Newman was an embarrassment when he was at the ABC, and now he routinely disgraces the pages of the lizard Oz ... and reptile watchers around the land chant in unison, it's all good.

And now for a treat, an after-dinner mint. You see, Bronnie hiring a chopper and the HUN presenting it as a story isn't the real story, the real story is that it's all the fault of the Labor party.

Yes, here's the lizard editorialist explaining it all:

If that doesn't warm the heart of reptile watchers as an expert example of forelock tugging, hand wringing and oyster tears, there's no truth and justice in the world.

Oh sure, there was no mention of the ABC, Media Watch and climate science as being of any interest or concern, pressing issues that should be at the forefront of everyone's consciousness, as they are with conscientious kool aid sipping reptiles?

Perhaps another day.

Now as part of the warm down, the pond always recommends a few bracing cartoons, nicely acerbic, like a cooling Serendipity lemon sorbet.

And what do you know, David Rowe's cartoon - more Rowe here - features a cute reptile!

And David Pope went back of Burke, and more Pope here.

Now remember anyone can play the game. The more reptile sightings reported to the pond by fun-loving reptile watchers, the more the whole family can share in the fun ...