A few minutes ago, I stepped out into my little garden/patio to dump some spare drinking water into the soil near my peach tree. (The same peach tree happened to be the source of a real Milago Beanfield moment for me earlier this year, namely the Death of the Blossoms.)
I don’t wear shoes in the house. But I keep a pair of sandals near both the front and back door for quick trips outside, like checking the mail or filling the bird feeder.
As I stepped into my hiking sandals, something cool bunched up against the toes of my left foot. The left sandal happens to be the one with the loose lining, thanks to its most recent trip through the washing machine. So I didn’t think anything of it. But then, as I was about halfway to the tree (all of five feet) it suddenly didn’t feel like loose lining at all. A little too cool. A little too. . . wriggly.
So I took off my shoe, and a lizard scampered out. A very dazed and bewildered lizard, but apparently unharmed.
Cute little thing.
Lagartijas I think they’re called in the Caribbean. Kids there sometimes keep them as pets. Maybe it’s your pet garden lizard. They are pretty cute when you get over the fact that they are lizards and they keep the bug population in check.
Right to the end, I was expecting it to be a scorpion.
I love the lizards here. I think they’re really neat. They’re still novel to me. I mean– lizards! In my house! And like you say, they keep the bugs in check. Every lizard I see in the garden has probably eaten a dozen things I’d really rather not see.
They sun themselves on the adobe outside my office window. I get a big kick out of watching them scamper up and down the wall.
We do think alike. Because the real end to this story, the one I didn’t know about when I posted this anecdote, involves nightmares about what very very easily could have been in my shoe instead of a cute and harmless lizard.
Uncute, not-so-harmless things. Hairy, stingy things.
Things that rhyme with “blorpion” and “sparantula”.
Holy shit, I’m creeping myself out again.
We’re just a regular Wild Kingdom out here. Zander, the huge fat cat was mesmerized by a tiny chipmunk literally dancing on the small stone divider outside the living room window. He seemed more terrified than predatory.