North Sydney homeowner breaks up bunny v goanna suburban showdown

A North Sydney rabbit has been saved from the clutches of a large goanna after 75-year-old Malcolm Thom shooed the reptile away from his house.

Mr Thom was feeding his 19-year-old dog Poppy when he saw the goanna with the squealing rabbit locked in its jaws, as the lizard clung to his screen door.

He quickly snapped a few photos of the pair before deciding the goanna had to go. 

Worried the large reptile might rip through the screen door and enter his home, Mr Thom grabbed a rake.

“His claws were tearing at the wire. I thought it’d break and he’d come inside right on top of me,” he said.                                                 

“After I carefully eased it off with a leaf rake it dropped the squealing rabbit ... then the goanna nearly ran up me.”

Mr Thom is used to wildlife on his property with goannas regularly coming to steal eggs from local brush turkeys.

“Lots of thing happen here but I hadn’t seen that before,”

Gary Pattison of the Wildlife Information and Education Service said goannas help to control the populations of small mammals.

He added that they are best left alone and small domestic pets should be monitored when in the garden.

The rabbit, whose leg was in the jaw of the goanna, was seen hobbling away on three legs, presumably to spend some extended time underground.