St. George can fuck right off. St. Patrick with him. In this house we dig the subjects of herpetology, reptile and amphibian. Sadly, in their season we can barely hear the frogs from our cul-de-sac, most of the time my boyfriend can’t hear them above his tinnitus. Also, though I know garter snakes are common in the area, I haven’t seen any since we moved in a year ago. Certainly, I never expected to see a lizard. I haven’t seen one since I was last in Kansas, half a continent away.
Now, like Charly on the other side of the planet, I’ve seen a drab brown lizard in my yard. People further south could surely not give a shit. Even in this state, east of the mountains in the plains, they would not be impressed. Floridians whose houses are low key infested with invasive wall-crawlers would tell me to take my happiness to hell. But no, this is cool and special.
There is an invasive creeping wood sorrel of the purple-leaved variety growing from a crack in the sidewalk between ours and our neighbors’ doors, which are right next to each other. My boyfriend was stepping out to check on the sunflowers he’s growing, when he noticed a movement in the sorrel. As the surprised beasty moved, his mind ran through possible identities – slug? snake? – before realizing it was a lizard. He called me outside in time to see it, though if I’d gone for a camera, I would have missed it.
We did not have an amazingly good look at it, but enough to be confident it was a brown lizard about seven inches in length (18 cm) with no obvious markings. Based on the area where we saw it, range maps, comparisons of different boring brown lizards, we are moderately sure it’s a northern alligator lizard, northwestern subspecies. I don’t know shit about lizards and presumed, wrongly, that I’d never see one on this side of the state, at least not here in the very developed suburbs.
It eats crickets, and I’ve noticed the crickets are less noisy this year. Lizard population increasing? Or did I just see lizard on the move because insect decline got them being more bold in searching for prey? They also eat slugs, and I hope they do.
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That lizard surely looks like a teensy tiny alligator.
Take that joy where you can!
We do not have many reptiles in the UK, it is possible to see adders locally, but I never have. I did see one in Devon many years ago. But I do talk a lot so, hearing me coming in plenty of time, I am sure they retreat to concealment.
Oh and Biggest Bro had loads of slow worms on his allotment that liked to hide under the cover on his turf stack, he whipped the cover off and there were dozens of them, bronze, silver and gold, all looking displeased at being disturbed from their napping.
thanks for sharing tha joy. incidentally, our lizard is a cousin to those slow worms. kinda cool.
Speaking as a Floridian, I love our lively little lizards.My yard has hosted at least nine species over my lifetime (two seem to no longer exist here, and some were only accidentals rather than residents), and I carefully track when they show up. How can you not love them? They’re little bursts of liveliness! They make each trip through the yard more interesting! Sure, maybe I wish that brown anoles and tropical house geckos weren’t so badly outnumbering all the native stuff, but lizards are still great. Some days, if it wasn’t for the lizards, we’d have no wildlife at all!