I killed a lizard this morning. Still kind of disturbed about it. I didn’t mean to kill the lizard. Little one-inch guy scampered into the house while I was bringing the pup in from her morning poop, and I—not knowing whether a lizard is something one should let live in one’s house but fearing it would grow into one of the big long-tailed lizards that run around the neighborhood and therefore choosing to err on one side of caution—tried to get it out. When doing this, I didn’t think of how good lizards are at sticking their feet and tails to things. I accidentally knocked a poor little lizard’s body off of its extremities. I know, I know, the tails can grow back. It was not just the tail. Nothing is growing back on that lizard.
With most animals, it’s clear whether or not you want them in your home. Cockroaches? No. Dogs? Yes, but only by invitation. Mice? No. Ladybugs? For whatever reason, sure. Lizards, though…lizards I don’t know about.
Maybe these are my Midwestern roots showing. Maybe people in more lizarded regions have a ready answer to whether or not it’s ok to let these guys take up residence without paying rent. Maybe it differs by lizard, too? A Lyft passenger once told me about how she noticed a gecko in her house and let it hang out because she thought it would kill bugs but then she noticed its tail lying twitching on the doormat while her cat licked its paws (it came up in conversation, please don’t think this passenger was nuts, the nuts passenger was the one who told me how she’d managed to accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt by continuing to get graduate degrees and continuing to take opportunities to travel abroad for projects in those programs without ever getting a job until she finally became unable to find lenders anymore and had to stop pursuing her PhD and exit the academic world).
Also: How big are baby lizards? Was this a baby lizard? Or was this thing full-grown? Are the broken eggs I see lying around the neighborhood lizard eggs? And how are the lizards in the neighborhood—not the geckos, unless there are multiple kinds of geckos in which case not the Geico-looking geckos—so darn fast? Those things fly. You go for a run by the edge of the retention marsh and it looks like the ground is moving. It’s like one of those rat piles next to the interstate, except it’s lizards and they’re all going somewhere. I would like somebody who knows every single thing there is to know about reptiles and amphibians (same thing? different? this is why I need an expert) to join me for a week and tell me everything there is to know about lizards. Beginning with: Is the one from this morning going to haunt my soul? If so, how do I make amends?
your neighborhood sounds dope