D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
October
2008
Continental Divide
Page: 2My plan, see, was to keep an eye on the lizard — herding it harmlessly with my feet if need be — while my wife grabbed something to pick it up with. (Don't lizards have cooties or something?) Her past success with a dish towel stuck in my mind. I could then be the man of the house, capture the lizard unmaimed, and release it into the wild with a few parting words of advice, such as, "Stay the hell out!"
Imagine my surprise, then, when my wife came running — no doubt thinking, from the tone of my hollering, that I'd severed an artery and was gooshing my life force onto the all-too-pale carpet — and picked up the lizard bare-handed. (My wife's hands were bare, that is; I couldn't see whether the lizard was wearing teensy gloves against human cooties.) Before I could exercise my manly prerogative, the lizard had been safely expelled.
This latest invader, according to my wife (who after all had a better view), was no whiptail at all but rather an Arizona alligator lizard. I'm hoping one of our many herpetologist readers can confirm whether these, too, can lose their tails to make a getaway. . .?
In any case, I remain determined to prove that I, too, can be a sort of Marlin Perkins of the lizard world. (Surely you remember him from TV's "Wild Kingdom"? Although perhaps I should really aim to emulate his sidekick Jim Fowler, who did all the hands-on wildlife wrangling while Marlin intoned about Mutual of Omaha: "While Jim subdues the pack of hyenas. . .") Lizard loose in the house? No problem, honey. I'll just coil it around my collar and stroll it outside.
The trick, I'm convinced, is to always look wherever the cats are looking. Hey, is that a Martian?
David A. Fryxell is a rare Editorus Neomaxicanus,
with a habitat
in and around Desert Exposure HQ.
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