Lizard in the House

Between trips up to shuffle dogs in and outside, I sat down and was looking at Facebook and Pinterest... you know, killing time.  Something caught my attention on the floor near our walkout basement door and when I got up to investigate it was a little lizard, maybe 2 1/2 to 3 inches long, with gray and tan stripes going the length of its body and a brilliant blue tail.

Decision point:  Do I freak out, climb back on the couch with my legs tucked under me screaming "Lizard!!" and hyperventilating or do I worry more about if it's poisonous or just a curiousity if the dogs get ahold of it?

It's already been a rough day with dogs making messes (and chewing up remotes and 'helping' me bring dirty clothes down to the laundry) and price gouging by a plumber.  Of all the service people I've ever needed to call in to help on a house project, it's the plumber that always leaves me feeling like my checkbook has been raped.  Seriously... It was almost $300 to replace a 7" piece of copper pipe and another $200 to flush the drain in our shower.  I shot him down when he wanted $215 each to put handles on the water spigots outside.  That's a $2 part at Home Depot and while I have no clue how to do it right now, I'm a smart girl and for that price I will figure it out.

Enough rant.  Obviously, the plumber has me a little disgruntled and upset...  So freaking out about the lizard would have been easy.  Oh, what a fit I could have pitched!

But I didn't.

I Googled it instead.  If the reports about the NSA keeping tabs on our computer activities is true at all, I bet someone finds my Google search record both fascinating and... disturbing.  Probably more disturbing than fascinating, really.

Oh well.  Back to the lizard...

It's a Brittle Blue Tailed Lizard that's seemingly taken up residence in our basement.  It's there along with a couple of cave crickets I've been ignoring since it's supposedly bad luck to kill the little beasties and I haven't been bothered by them quite enough to find a cup, dance around like a maniac and catch them for release outside.  My laziness has granted them a reprieve and probably will with the lizard, too.  I'm not too proud to admit that.  Ignoring it gets me out of doing a lot of stuff. Or I guess if I'm putting it in more flattering terms... Unless it poses a real threat I'm pretty much of the opinion 'live and let live.'  And this little lizard doesn't seem to be any threat at all.

Photo from http://www.georgiabackyardnature.com

This one isn't who's in my basement... he (or she?) moved too fast for me to get a picture.  I didn't even get a single bad shot so I'm borrowing one from someone else who's had a lizardly encounter.  These blue tails are non-poisonous, eat lots of insects in the garden and around the foundation of a house.  I understand they will bite if cornered and provoked, but it sounds like even the bite is no big deal to human or dog.  That bright blue tail is a decoy device and it breaks off if you grab it then the lizard grows a new one.  Going out on a limb here and saying that's the 'brittle' part of it's name?

All those advice memes urging you to do something you've never done before... yeah, I think I'm good on new things for awhile now.  Thank you very much!  Seems like almost every day lately has been throwing me into doing new things.  Willingly often; otherwise pretty frequently, too.

A Chance Encounter With Local Wildlife

Today has been more than a little nerve-wracking... It's awfully hard to be at the mercy of someone else's mortgage lender who seems to have less than an appropriate level of interest in getting this deal closed.  Someday I'm sure all the stress they are causing will be the makings for a funny story.  But that day is not today!  So a chance encounter with some local wildlife was a welcome, if short, distraction.

I walked outside to get some papers out of my car and noticed a small lizard sunning itself on the rocks of a retaining wall between this and the neighboring property which sits a bit higher on the hillside.  It wasn't very happy to pose for my picture taking pleasure but I was able to snap this with my cell phone before it scurried off and after getting some friends to take a look we decided it was probably an Eastern Fence Lizard (a.k.a. prairie lizard, fence swift, gray lizard, or pine lizard depending on your locale).

The skin was sort of a mottled gray and from nose to tail tip I'd guess it measured about 4 inches long.  As it scooted along, the underbelly appeared light, almost white.  (Which may mean it was a female... everything I found online said the males are browner and have blue-colored bellies.)

Google confirmed the identity and came up with some other facts about this cute little reptile.

Wait.  Did I just say "cute" and "reptile" in the same sentence?

I did not see that coming!

Wikipedia gives the genus name as Sceloporus undulatus.  Sceloporus is derived from the Greek word "skelos" (meaning leg) combined with the Latin word "porus" (meaning hole) in reference to this lizard breed's large femoral pores.   "Undulatus," Latin for wave, refers to the transverse dark crossbars on their backs.  And it says this 4-7 1/2 inch long lizard is found in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Southern Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Mississippi, Delaware, northern Florida, and southern New Jersey and that there's also an isolated population in southeastern New York.

A little more digging around other websites uncovered much the same information but I also learned that they are non-venomous.  Most people who were posting pictures and comments and articles weren't overly concerned when their kids caught these little lizards or the cat drug a mortally wounded one home and left his gift of prey on the doorstep.

Not poison... maybe things are looking up for that cute factor!

In fact, they are among the good guys in the garden as their favorite meals include spiders and other pesky insects that we don't want nibbling on our tender and expensive plants.  So I say welcome to my world, and munch on little lizard, munch on!!

People who've lived here for awhile tell me to expect to see lots of them.  They say there'll be gray ones and  brown ones and green ones... oh my!