While picking lemons this morning I found the box stuck under a yucca plant. When I picked the box up I got such a surprise I almost flung it over the wall. Something in it was moving. Here in the Arizona desert it could be anything from a rattlesnake to a tarantula, neither of which I want to be that close to.
Instead I found this pretty lizard-about 6 inches from head to tail. I guess the plastic walls of the box prevented it from getting out. For a minute I thought of keeping the lizard and buying a reptile habitat for it. Then I realized that all of the outdoors here is this lizard's natural habitat. I knew I had to set it free.
But not until I took its picture.
I got three pictures taken before Lizard decided it had enough of the papparazzi. It got all its strength together and leaped out of the container. It ran across my foot, which resulted in me doing a few fancy dance steps I didn't know I had in me. Then it dashed for the open slider door, with three chihuahuas in full pursuit. I managed to slam the screen door shut before Lizard took over the house. It headed off for some safe crevice in the patio wall. My three chihuahuas (regal Lola would never be a part of something as undignified as this) were very dismayed that they'd lost the Amazing Race. I was just glad the lizard didn't get into the house because Marko's always warning me to keep the screen door shut, just so things like this don't happen.
Spring in Arizona promises to present me with more close encounters of the wiggly type. I could do without that.
I'm going to email my husband this picture.
And I'm going to tell him it was a MONSTER, at LEAST three feet long, and I was very lucky to survive the encounter.
