Sunday, September 26, 2010

In Which I Run, Naked and Soaking Wet, Outside with a Lizard

Ah, that got your attention, didn't it?

Two days ago, I noticed a small lizard in my bathroom. I tried to catch him but he was a clever little reptile and wouldn't cooperate. I bid him farewell. After all, small, fast things do not do well in The Zoo. A certain cat, if she saw it, would pounce and pat and fling it around, torturing it to death--if it didn't die of a heart attack during that whole horror fest. A certain dog, if he saw it, would immediately swallow it, and it was so tiny he wouldn't even have noticed he had swallowed anything. Either way, a vain and nasty death.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a little blob on the floor of the tub while rinsing down the shower stall after my morning shower. Now, I don't shower with my contacts in, so I could be reasonably forgiven if I had shrieked and leapt five feet in the air. But I knew instantly it was my little friend, and that somehow he'd survived two or three days in my house with no food. So I knelt down, coaxed him onto my palm, made a fist, and then ran out the back door to let him free in my Texas ranger bush. Completely naked and soaking wet.

Luckily, I didn't scare any neighbors. Of course, I still couldn't see anything more than two feet away, so I can't swear I haven't permanently scarred someone's vision. I guess we'll know the next time I meet them on the street, if they avert their eyes and turn bright red, that the blob I thought was a bush was the neighbor on their patio, drinking coffee in the early morning calm.

No comments:

Post a Comment