Last week, Miss Daisy was tossing around something black about two inches long.  I thought it might be a piece of plastic and a choking hazard so naturally I tried to retrieve it. Her jaws were firmly clamped on her treasure there was no way she was giving it up.  We made a couple of laps around the house but she was leading the whole way and it was a lost cause.

I headed to the kitchen to fix lunch and Daisy couldn’t resist the temptation to follow along to see what was on the menu. I did an about face, ran back to the living room and grabbed the black thing.  It wasn’t a piece of plastic.  Much to my horror, the black thing turned out to be the leg of a lizard.  It was awful, there was a tiny little foot with long toes and sharp looking claws.  I’m sure he was a cute little lizard at one time but he wasn’t looking good at the moment.  

 We are hoping Miss Daisy simply found the leg, maybe dropped by a hawk or roadrunner.   I’d like to think she didn’t actually kill and eat the little guy.  I really don’t think she’d do that, but the lizards  do taunt her. They make a big show of sauntering across the patio and then run and hide in the lantana, maybe this one wasn’t fast enough.   Retrieving part of a dead lizard is pretty gross, but biting down on a live one is too disgusting to think about. Whatever, I’m rethinking the doggie kisses. 

Dogs always chase lizards but the good news is the dogs seldom actually catch the speedy devils.  I do remember the time Zoe caught a medium size one and brought it proudly to the back door.  She was smiling with just the tail and two back feet poking out of her mouth.  We quickly moved to parenting mode and were able to retrieve the creature and it happily ran off to hide in the lantana.  So Yuck!!

When we first moved into this house in the desert, we were excited about all the wildlife.  We gave the birds names and loved watching them at the feeder.  We had a lot of lizards and they were faster than Bailey, the cat, so life was good.  

We’ll never forget the day a big spiny lizard got in the house.  If you live in Arizona you quickly learn to recognize the spiny lizards as the ‘big guys’. They aren’t the adorable little whip tail variety or the cute spotted ones.  These lizards remind me of some kind of pre-historic creature like a miniature dinosaur.   Now you have the villain in the story, then there is Monty, the brave warrior, and me, the screaming damsel in distress. In defense of the lizard, he didn’t want to be in the house anymore than we wanted him inside.  So, of course, he was running all over the place,  his feet had long claws that made a horrible scratching noise on the tile as he ran.  We wanted to catch him and put him back outside but, trying to coax a lizard to jump into a box is hopeless.  After running all over the living room he finally headed for the dinning room.  He ran under the buffet and while I got down on my hands and knees to see where he was,  he came shooting out and scared the living daylights out of me.  Monty was trying his best to catch him and was now screaming like a mad woman.  

We opened the sliding glass door and spent an hour waving beach towels trying shoo him outside.  Finally he took off for the kitchen and Monty ran to open the kitchen door so he could get out.  No sooner had Monty grabbed the door knob and swung the door than the ill-fated lizard changed directions and ran to the hinge side of the door.  It was an awful moment, while the door was swinging open the lizard poked his head through the narrow opening and got squished.  We were stunned into silence,  OMG we felt so bad.  I admit I was a little afraid of him but certainly didn’t want him meet such an untimely end.  In hindsight maybe we should have just let him live here in the house with us.  We tried so hard to get him to safety and he was so close.  Now he was toast. 

Apparently he left a large family because every summer several spiny lizards come out of hibernation and patrol the yard like they own it.  Their eyes have a vicious gleam and we suspect they have revenge in mine.  

Spiney lizard in the house.

Spiney lizard in the yard

 

2 replies
    • Carrie Bonello
      Carrie Bonello says:

      Monty said he was afraid the neighbors were going to call the police I screamed so loud when the monster ran toward me. We did fee bad about squashing him, didn’t mean for that to happen.

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