Aren’t you glad?

I know you are.

This Monday’s Miracle is that I have run out of things to say about lizards. For now.

It reminds me of that old Knock, Knock joke

Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock, Knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?

Repeat until your parents accuse you of not knowing the punch line and THEN you say

Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Orange.
(with relief) Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana again?

And much hilarity ensues. At least, when you’re seven.

So, aren’t you glad I didn’t say lizard again?

But, I must point out something else about this whole thing.

I got seven (eight, if you count this one) blog posts out of a five minute incident.

And that is surely a miracle!

Next time

I’m gonna be prepared!

We’ve seen how well my bravery held up to an escaping lizard. I mean, it was a good try, a valiant effort, but it was mostly luck. For the lizard, too, because who know what would have happened if I hadn’t been able to open the window and give him an escape route.

So, the question is what happens next time?

There will almost certainly be a next time. Eternal vigilance is not possible. I mean, a person has to go in and out of the door.

I have considered the problem from all sides.

It seems to me there are four possible solutions:

I could just ignore any lizards that are out-of-bounds.
This seems rather hard on the lizards. I don’t think they will fare well in this environment. It would be like those cargo bays on Star Trek when the environmental controls go wonky. And I would have to dispose of the bodies which is nearly as bad as rescuing the living.
I could get a cat.
This, too, would be hard on the lizards. Plus, cats like to bring you presents, and I don’t really want a lizard, dead or alive. Then, too, I have known cats that won’t touch a lizard—so then I’d have a lizard and a cat.
I could get better at catching lizards.
This solution has possibilities. Next time I am outdoors with my gardening gloves on, I will practice. There’s a lizard that lives inside the spigot by the garage. He tends to tumble into the watering can whenever I fill it. Usually, I just dump him out, but maybe a water-logged lizard is slower. Then, too, capture attempts outside are free of the fear that I’ll chase the lizard behind a bookshelf only to have it leap onto me at some later point from off The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. (I now have 7 copies of that, by the way, for a project I’m starting. That’s another story.)
I could get a lizard trap.
A lizard trap! Is there such a thing? Quick, call Google-fingers! (Okay, you can have Superman and Mighty Mouse. Personally, I get much more use out of Google.)

Here is what I’ve found today.

It is possible to catch lizards on glue traps. It is also possible to release them from the glue trap using vegetable oil. On the other hand, do you want to deal with a lizard that’s been oiled and glued? I googled again.

There doesn’t seem to be a big market for lizard traps. Not a lot of different models. Hardly any, in fact. Actually…none.

But…there is a website with some lizard-catching advice, and it suggests…head smack!…a shoe box. Why didn’t I think of that?

You can bet, next time, I’ll not only know where my gardening gloves are but also the location of the lizard loafers.

Leapin’ Lizards

At long last.

The conclusion to the great saurian saga of 2013.

If you recall, I was relating my adventures in pursuit of a solution to an enormous lizard problem. Enormity is a relative concept—relative, basically, to your level of cowardice in the face of non-humanoid beings. Mine, historically, has been high, but I am striving to overcome that, and I welcomed this opportunity for growth. (Welcome may be too strong a word. I…accepted…it.)

When we left our story, the lizard was on the windowsill, the gardening gloves were in the drawer and Elaine was in an unusual state of courage and determination.

Which lasted about two minutes—or the total amount of time it took for me to get the gloves, put them on, and reach for the lizard.

The lizard, being a lizard, was not one to sit like patience on a monument* (Flapdoodle!) while rescue was effected. At the first touch of a gloved finger, it leapt!

Leapin’ Lizards!

Every girl’s dream start to a day.

Now, bear in mind, when I say “leapt” that you must consider the source. I have a level of…discomfort…with rodents and reptiles (and spiders) that tends to lend connotations of warp speed to their movements and Japanese horror movie magic to their size as I relate my adventures.

This poor little thing “leapt” all of two inches. There was nowhere, after all, to go. On the one side, the window. On another, the window frame. On the other two sides, my advancing hand.

A little more ruthless effort, and I’d have had him.

Incipient bravery only takes you so far, however.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to grab. (Who wants to end up with a tail in her hand and half an escaped lizard wandering the halls?)

We retreated to our respective corners. Or, the lizard did, anyway, skulking in the corner of the sill, window, and wall. I took a step back to catch my breath.

The prospect was dim.

Failure loomed.

Was I going to have to…oh, the shame…wake up the MotH?*

Just when that horrible prospect seemed inevitable, victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat!

The lizard was sitting on the window sill!

Window sill.

Window.

Window!

I am thankful this Thursday that my brain woke up to the realization that windows are designed to be opened, that these particular windows do not have screens, that I moved slowly enough not to spook the lizard into further flight, and that the lizard was brave enough to wait for me to open the window and smart enough to get the hell out while the going was good.

So, okay.

It wasn’t my finest moment.

On the other hand, the MotH slept on, the house is lizard-less, and the lizard roams free in its natural habitat.

Things could be worse.

Next time…well, I’ve found some things we’ll discuss tomorrow to deal with the next time.

* Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II, sc 4

** MotH=Man of the House

Conundrums

Why? When? And, more importantly—how?

I know you are all madly curious to discover the outcome to the lizard adventure (see my two previous posts if you aren’t up to speed), but we need to pause for just a moment and ask ourselves some important questions.

How did the lizard get into the house?

This is a piece of critical information that is sadly lacking. You see, when I lived in a NYC apartment and we had a mouse, it was possible to find a hole in the wall behind the stove where the gas pipe came into the apartment. The proper procedure when dealing with uninvited guests is:

Get over the shock.
Remove the interloper.
Figure out the point of entry.
Close it.

This worked very well with the mouse. You do have to remember that I was not the person who accomplished the removal. At that stage of my personal growth, it was a triumph not to remove myself. Nonetheless, the mouse was gone, and we were reasonably certain it wasn’t coming back.

So, how did the lizard get into the house? Lesser questions—more a matter of curiosity than critical pieces of information—are why did the lizard get into the house and when?

I can’t say for sure, but I assume the when was not too long before I discovered it. Lizards, unlike spiders, aren’t known for skulking in the shadows and lying in wait. In addition, there’s not that much for a lizard to eat in this house (I hope and pray). Any lizard that has been here for any length of time would not need catching and releasing. It would need sweeping up.

The why is immaterial except insofar as it has an impact on future preventive measures. I suppose he thought it was a good idea at the time. (I’ve gotten myself into some predicaments in the same way.)

The how, though. The how is a puzzlement.

Definitely something that deserves consideration. Unfortunately, I think I’ll be wondering about that for a while. I suspect, since I don’t have a ravening horde of invading lizards—and I do have a lot of lizards outside—that it’s not some breach in the home’s defenses like a hole in a wall.

I think it’s more a crime of opportunism. The lizard saw an open door and took a chance.

I’m going with that, anyway, in the absence of any other theories.

And tomorrow, I will tell you what happened in the great lizard wrangling of 2013.

Organization is the key

to lizard extraction

In yesterday’s episode, our heroine (me) made the momentous decision to remove an interloping lizard single-handedly.

For those who are not troubled by reptiles and/or other small scurrying creatures, this may not seem a sea-change* (Flapdoodle!) But for someone who once (long ago in a galaxy far, far away) spent a terror-filled night tortured by a cricket and, somewhat later in life, nearly fell off the rocking chair she had leapt onto at the sudden appearance of a hamster in an apartment previously hamster-less, it is, indeed, the miracle which warranted beginning the story yesterday as part of our series of Monday Miracles.

In a state of mingled what-am-I-thinking and how-brave-am-I as I contemplated reptile removal, I considered the options.

The MotH** just picks them up. As, in fact, had my grandmother and my mother, in the past, so that’s pretty much all that occurred to me, and clearly, that was what I was going to have to do.

Now, visited by sudden bravery I might be, but I am also a person with a certain amount of self-awareness. I knew it was extremely unlikely that this resolve would be carried through bare-handed.

And this is where today’s Tuesday Tip comes into play.

Always know where your gardening gloves are!

I have several pairs of work gloves and gardening gloves, and none of them are kept in the garage (me having a healthy—some might say ‘elevated’—sense of self-preservation and no wish to encounter a brown recluse spider being reclusive alongside my index finger). In fact, my best gardening gloves—the ones with the rubber fingers allowing for more manual dexterity than the leather work gloves—are in a drawer next to the side door.

Now, this is the important part. Not only are they supposed to be in the drawer next to the side door, they actually are there.

Look out, lizard.

Will Elaine find her gardening gloves? Will the lizard wait until she does? Will this story have a happy ending? And how did the lizard get on the window sill, anyway?

For the answer to these and other questions, tune in tomorrow to Wondering Wednesday.

* Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, sc 5 (Ariel’s song)

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”

** MotH=Man of the House

Nothing to fear

but lizards in the house.

And the miracle is that I’m getting past that.

Actually, lest my sister refuse to visit me again, let me hasten to explain that I don’t have many lizards in the house. Hardly any. In fact, I’ve been here nearly three years, and the one of which I am about to speak is only the second. That’s not bad considering the number that hang around outside. (I have named the house Casa Lagarto, after all.)

Mostly, we have chameleons (which are, probably, really anoles) and geckos and a few skinks.

The lizard in my story was, I think, a chameleon. Although I have an easier time distinguishing them from the geckos when they are their native green. Once they’ve decided brown is the color of the day, it’s a little harder. But, judging by shape, this was a chameleon.

I have long been accustomed—well, okay—I have for a couple of years been accustomed to seeing the lizards scuttle around outside without the need for a gasp and an eek. I don’t even have that zero at the bone* feeling when I come face to face with an enraged anole hanging head height on the garage wall and inflating its throat and glaring at me.

This does not mean, however, that I want them to come to breakfast. And thereby hangs a tale.

Fortunately, thereby does not hang a tail. You do know that many a lizard will just leave its tails behind if you happen to grab it, right? Then, if ever, is the time for “eek”—and likewise, “ugh.”

But, I digress.

The breakfast lizard did not actually come to breakfast. It was not, in fact, anywhere near the breakfast table. I, however, had come downstairs early in the morning with a view toward getting something to eat.

The first thing to do, in my house, when you come downstairs of a morning is to open the curtains. You want to see the creek in the morning. Often, the coots are there to offer matutinal greetings. (Hah! Never thought I’d get to use “matutinal” in a sentence!)

So…I opened the kitchen curtains. I opened the venetian blind on the side window. I opened the bay window curtains. And then, I went to open the curtains to the two big picture windows, creekside. At this point, since I don’t have the official, I-picked-these-out-and-I-love-them window treatments, this requires the use of a long stick to nudge the 4 panels of temporary curtains aside.

One slides left, a second slides right, a third…holy cow! There’s a lizard on the window sill.

Eeek.

Outside, I am accustomed to the unexpected—if that’s not an oxymoron. Inside, it’s a little different. First, there’s the involuntary gasp and recoil, by which time it never seems to me that there’s any point in a scream of any sort. (I sometimes envy the women who scream. My reaction is always too silent to awaken the MotH.**)

But, eek. There’s a lizard on the window sill—and a MotH who won’t appreciate being awakened and who is, properly, scoff-ful (is that a word?) of irrational fears.

And then came the miracle.

I decided I—I!— would catch (and release, of course) the lizard.

Tune in tomorrow to hear how I fared.

* Dickinson, Emily, The Snake—but the principle is the same.

** MotH = Man of the House

Eeek!

Acromantulas

Well, not really. But I know exactly how Ronald Weasley felt when he and Harry Potter tracked Aragog to his lair (web?).

I took the Christmas lights down today.

The ones around the garage—they were relatively easy.

The dock…that’s another story.

It’s not that it was hard to remove them. A little tricky maybe where they went around the corner and over the lamp, but I managed. A combination of a broom handle and acrobatic skill. Nothing spectacular.

It’s just that there are a few more spiders than usual out on the dock just now. Maybe it’s been too warm? I don’t know. But eeek!

I was okay with the necessity to evade the spider webs as I got the lights down off their hooks.

I was okay with the spider that rapelled past me as I handed the string of lights around the piling.

It’s just the rather large arachnid that was crawling across the front of my sweatshirt as I was coiling the lights that finished me off.

But…you know…let’s look on the bright side. I’m thankful I saw it before I wore it inside. I’m thankful it was on my shirt and not my head or my hand. I’m thankful that the heebie-jeebies were not so debilitating that I was unable to finish the job.

But…eeek!

I’m also hoping that by the time you read this post, I will be thankful that I did not have spider nightmares all last night. (I’m not feeling too confident about that because just writing this makes me feel like things are crawling on me, but hope is good. It never hurts to have hope.)

What I’d like to know, though, is just what is it the lizards think they are doing? I realize that the grasshoppers may be too large for them. But the spiders?

The natural balance around here seems off.

The spiders need to eat the other bugs, and then the lizards need to eat the spiders. It seems a perfectly straightforward food chain to me, but I don’t think the lizards are doing their part.

Aaaagh!

The unbelievable gardening accident that ended well.

I hope.

I spent some time weeding one of my flower beds yesterday. It’s finally gotten cool enough that a person can stand being outside more than absolutely necessary. So, I’ve been catching up on my weeding, a little at a time, over the past week.

I have these flower beds—although why I’m calling them flower beds when only 2 of them have actual flowers is something we can examine later. Anyway, I have these flower beds. There are about 7 of them. Two feet wide or so. Running along the length of various portions of the house, with concrete borders.

A while back, we bought some large river rock to use as—what?—a sort of ground cover. In lieu of mulch. I’ll say this for the river rock. It makes it easy to see what’s a weed and what isn’t. Because there’s not much else planted in these beds.

We have some larger, shrub-like plants, a vinca, a ton of canna lilies, a couple of spider lilies and a hydrangea. In the back, there’s a begonia, in a pot, sitting on top of the rocks, and a flowering shade plant whose name I cannot remember and which has yet to grow more than an inch or show any sign of flowering. Anything else green that pokes its head up through the rocks is a weed.

I like that. Knowledge is not required. See a green thing. Pull it up.

But yesterday, this lack of knowledge could have had some disastrous consequences for a baby lizard.

What happened is this.

I was weeding. Specifically, I was pulling up dollar weed. This is something of a losing battle. In a defined area, however, it is possible to eliminate visible signs for a while. If you are careful, you can also pull up a fair length of the subterranean runners. They are tubular and white.

So, when I found a small round white ball, I thought it had something to do with the dollar weed. I picked it up. And then I dropped it. By accident.

Imagine my surprise at seeing a wet and slimy baby lizard clinging to a rock after the round white ball—otherwise known as an egg—broke open.

Imagine my horror at realizing I had just played midwife to a lizard—and caused a premature delivery.

Imagine my relief when the slimy little thing dried out and scuttled away.

I’m not enamored of lizards, but they are harmless and amusing, and I don’t want to kill them if they can manage to stay outside—which, so far, most of them have. Even if they come inside, I try to have the MotH catch and release. (Haven’t quite gotten there myself. Maybe someday.)

So, I’m thankful that the lizard seemed okay after our mutual shocking experience.

Next time I see one of those small white balls, I’m leaving it strictly alone.

It’s the little things

Small miracles.

It’s been a weekend of little things.

First, I got the house straightened up. The way is now clear for some major cleaning.

Then, I did a lot of running around shopping for things that have been on my list for a while. You know—the ‘not urgent but I’ll need these someday’ things: the ant killer, the extra bottle of window cleaner, etc.

And I stocked up on stuff to fill the new freezer—which is also little, but big enough for us. Now, maybe, the ice cream won’t fall out every time we open the door of the one on the fridge.

I pruned the camphor tree—which qualifies as a series of small miracles. A) I did a pretty good job. It’s neat and symmetrical. B) Pruning gives me a chance to smell the camphor, which is a nice old-fashioned scent and one I like. C) Pruning the top foot off the tree opened up an unbroken line of sight to the most beautiful flowering tree in my neighbors’ yard. Gorgeous yellow flowers. I don’t know what they are, but I like looking at them.

But the biggest small miracle was just a tiny moment watching the lizard on the chrysanthemum.

I bought a chrysanthemum plant when I was shopping. Just a small one. Yellow. Because it was cheerful looking. I haven’t had a chance to transfer it to a more permanent location, but I set the small pot on top of the dirt in an enormous, but plant-free, pot on the patio. It’s just outside the window, and therein lies the tale.

In the middle of the various other things I was doing today, I remembered I had this new chrysanthemum, and I stepped over to the window for a moment of appreciation. Sitting right on top of the densely packed yellow blossoms, with a royal air of contentment, was a little brown lizard.

I think that it was a brown anole—although I confess to a certain amount of willful ignorance where reptiles are concerned.

What I do know is that I have never seen something so satisfied with its perch as this little lizard appeared to be.

And, really, why not?

Wouldn’t you like to be sitting on a bed of flowers, in the sunshine, overlooking the water right now? I consider it more than a small miracle that both the lizard and I had that moment to enjoy that view.

Lizards are letting me down

Friday Finding

The lizards over here at Casa Lagarto are not holding up their end of the bargain.

See, we have a lot of lizards here at the Casa. Chameleons and geckos and skinks…and a truly shivery nekkid-looking thing that bears more of a resemblance to a snake than one would think would be quite safe for a lizard. Other than the nekkid-looking thing, I am quite happy for the lizards to hang out here. (As long as they stay outside. That’s part of the deal.)

Lizards are good for eating bugs. And bugs…well, you know.

Oh, sure. There’s that cycle of life thing and the food chain and all that. But bugs, to me, are kind of like the garbage dump. We all know we have to have them, “but not in my backyard.” (And the garbage dump doesn’t generally display the vampire tendencies of the mosquitoes. So there’s that.)

But lately, we’ve had an awful lot of grasshoppers. And not just any grasshoppers, mind you, but the Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers–otherwise known as the Georgia Thumper. These things are huge.

You want to see a picture? Click here for a shot taken by Scattergun UK and posted on Flickr.

That shot doesn’t provide any reference point as to size, but take it from me. They are HUGE. Like, I’m not sure a fight between Godzilla and a Grasshopper in a Japanese horror movie would end with Godzilla taking home the title.

(Okay, okay. They are not that huge. But they are bugs! It adds a certain ick factor.)

And they are decimating the plants. The leaves on my canna lilies are all raggedy-looking. I think they’ve started in on the hydrangea, and I knocked one out of the camphor tree yesterday.

There doesn’t seem to be anything you can spray to control them. You’ve got to take them out one at a time. My husband is on grasshopper patrol. But, you know, you can’t spend all day lying in wait for insects.

And I would have thought that the lizards would have done more to prevent this problem.

I’m disappointed in them.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Lizards