An unwelcome visitor

The other day I was catching up with a blog I read.  She wrote an article about how she had found a rattlesnake in her backyard, and because she had two dogs that roamed the backyard, her vet recommended she take her dogs to snake training.  I was laughing at her description of her two dogs and how they both reacted differently to the training.  The blogger lives in Utah, and I shuddered to think of finding a rattlesnake in the backyard.  We have giant, black snakes that live under my neighbor's bushes and having them inside my pool fence, let alone my yard, causes me great stress.  But seeing a rattlesnake in my yard?  Might as well just shoot me now.  And it could happen because we have them here in Florida.  The fact that I am still alive means that I haven't seen one thus far that wasn't living behind glass.

Recently one of those black snakes crawled through our open screen door (thanks Darcy) while Tom was outside cleaning the pool.  He happened to look up just in time as the snake came slithering through the door all "hey there, neighbor, what's happening?"  Now my husband is just like my brother when it comes to any icky animal that slithers or crawls on more than four legs; he acts like a girl.  He must have shrieked because I wandered outside about that time, probably lured by the noises coming from his body.  The snake had curled into a ball on the other side of the pool from where I was standing.  Tom was trying to poke him with the pole that has our net for scooping out icky bugs from the pool on one end.  The snake, not appreciating being poked with a pole, suddenly lurched out at Tom, his mouth opened and a terrible hissing noise coming from its mouth.  At that point I was inside the house watching Tom through the window while the dog whined and scratched the door knowing that his master was out there alone fighting off a dangerous predator.  Eventually Tom got the snake to curl around the pole enough that he could toss the snake out the open screen door.  It gave both of us nightmares for days.  I distinctly remember saying at the time, "Give me a lizard inside my house any day!"

Here in the part of Florida where we reside we have brown anole lizards that roam pretty much everywhere we have walkways, shrubbery, and trees.  They peek out of our mailboxes, they peer in at us from our window panes, and occasionally, when doors get left open, they come inside our houses and hang out for awhile.  The first time that one of the lizards got inside our apartment when I first moved here I screamed so loud and attacked it with a broom that I was sure the downstairs neighbors would call the police and report an intruder.  All I succeeded in doing was to knock its tale off, which if you don't know, keeps on moving after it is unattached from the lizard body.  I think my head separated from my own body at that point because I don't really remember much after that.

Now that I am practically a native I find that the lizards don't bother me so much.  I got over them around the time my co-worker would pick them up and attach them to her ears like earrings. I respect that they eat cockroaches and spiders and try not to step on them when I wander outside.  I keep my dog, who thinks they are outside just for him to chase, from killing them.  I understand that they are a part of this paradise we live in and I leave them be.  I do not, however, like them in my house.  They don't like being in my house either, but sometimes (when doors are left open) they wander in to look around.  They then lose their bearings and end up trapped, and when anoles are trapped they change body color to match the things around them as to blend in so no one will notice a moving four legged reptile on the wall above the TV.

While watching said TV the other day I realized that we had a visitor who was enjoying the same program along with me.  He was almost as gold as my wall and if he had only stayed still I probably wouldn't have noticed him.  I did, however, know we had a lizard in the house because Darcy had come running in from the Steelers room the day before, jumping on one leg, arms flailing around in the air above her head, eyes wide, screaming, "THERE IS A LIZARD IN THE HOUSE AND IT IS IN THE SAME ROOM AS I AM!"  I thought he might keep her from watching television every day, but apparently she too knew he wasn't going to cause much trouble because after running through the house she went back in the room, one eye on the TV and the other on the lizard.

The problem with having a lizard in your house is that eventually he needs water and tends to gravitate toward areas where he might find water.  The second problem with having a lizard in your house is that you eventually forget he is even in your house.  Eventually of course those two problems collide.  Ours happened a couple of days ago when Darcy came running out of the bathroom naked, dripping wet from her shower, her arms flailing around in the air above her head, screaming, "THE LIZARD IS IN THE BATHROOM!"  I was sitting on the couch reading a great book at the time and so while it registered, it didn't really register.  I promptly forgot about it.

We have two bathrooms in our house.  One is attached to the master bathroom.  The other is in the hallway.  I rarely use the hallway bathroom because most of the time it is full of the girls' clothes and hair, and wet washrags and towels; all of it on the floor.  Also it is the bathroom where the dog can open the door, and he does that anytime I go in there to sit down on the toilet.  "Hey!  Whatcha doing in here?"  But occasionally I use that bathroom, mostly when I'm too tired to hike the five steps down the hall into the other one.

Yesterday happened to be one of those days.  We were hurrying to get out of the house to get Madison to the mall to meet her friend when I realized I should probably pop into the bathroom because the mall is a good thirty minute drive.  I was sitting on the toilet when I noticed that the roll of toilet paper hanging next to me was depleted.  Annoyed, and muttering to myself about how hard it is to replace the toilet roll, I leaned down to the stand where the extra rolls of toilet paper are kept.  Of course there was only one of those left, and so I had to lean really far over to pull that roll up the pole.  I brought it around the front of me so that I could position the roll properly so that the paper comes off the roll forward instead of underneath, and when I went to start the roll I found myself staring eye to eye with our visiting anole lizard who had changed his color almost transparent.  He was attached to the toilet paper as if he were hanging on for dear life and his eyes were bulging out of his pea size head and he was practically screaming, "THERE IS A HUMAN IN THE BATHROOM WITH ME!"

I, of course, sensing his terror did what any human would do in this situation.  I screaming loudly and threw the roll of toilet paper out the door which the dog had just opened to see how things were coming along with me.  He, of course, did not realize that his favorite toy was attached to the toilet paper roll and instead watched it fly by him, turning back to me to say, "Seriously?  Was that necessary?  I was just concerned about how long you were in here.  I thought you guys had somewhere to be."  And then Darcy was in the doorway with her hands on her hips, "I told you the lizard was in there!"  And then the toilet paper roll was back in the bathroom and the lizard, taking advantage of all the shrieking, jumped off of it and scurried behind the toilet.

In came Madison to the rescue.  Years ago she took it upon herself to capture all of the lizards that happened to wander inside, using the net from her fish tank and a piece of paper.  Now that the fish are gone she doesn't have her net and so she used what was handy, a large cup used to rinse the dog during his bathing.  She dumped the cup over the poor, scared lizard and used a piece of paper to secure the top so that he couldn't hop out.

She then carried all of this outside.  Kneeling down, she put the paper down and lifted the cup.  No lizard.  He was inside the cup arms and legs stretched out to hold on to both sides as if he were Spiderman.  Gently she tapped the cup and out popped our lizard.  He blinked in the sunlight, his head moving left and right, and then he scurried across our walkway shouting over his shoulder, "Thanks for the hospitality, but your house is too noisy for me!"