Reptilian roommate
Oh…my…god. There are freakin’ lizards in my apartment!!! I know I was excited about seeing my first wild iguana down here a couple of weeks ago, but tonight I’ve discovered that I’m really just not a lizard person.
I was just winding down for the evening, brushing my teeth and getting ready to go to bed. I came into my room and noticed an annoying little moth buzzing around and I was trying to shoo him out. When I turned the overhead light on to get a better look, I found the moth flitting towards the far wall…and beyond it, clinging to the wall with its hideous little slimy feet was a two-inch long, pale, nearly translucent horrible little lizard! Don’t get me wrong, I love lizards. I really do. But not in my bedroom!
I had no intention of killing the thing–I’ve always been a catch and release kind of girl. But this thing was seriously creeping me out. Spiders are normal household pests. Cockroaches, they give me all sorts of heebiejeebies, but even those happen every now and then. Not lizards. Never lizards. On the porch, yes…five inches from my pillow, no. I couldn’t move. I knew as soon as I turned my back to go grab a cup to catch it in that it would scurry away and I’d never find it and I’d have to camp out on the couch indefinitely. So I stared at it for a good minute before it bolted down the wall and closer to my bed. I screamed and ran for the cup! When I came back I found it, but it wasn’t a good angle for me to catch it because it had gone down right between the bed and the wall. So I pulled out the duffle bags, save one that the lizard had jumped on, and yanked the bed frame away from the wall so I could get at the bag. By this point I was so afraid I’d lose my bed to the lizard that I’d traded the cup for a flip-flop and was psyching myself up for carnage. I crawled up on my bed, leaned over and swatted at it, screaming at the same time like the total girl I felt like. I’m sure my neighbors are expecting to see me on the 6 o’clock news tomorrow.
I wasn’t sure if I’d killed it or not, so I kinda poked at the bag with my shoe and waited. I looked under the bed to see if it had ran somewhere else. No sign. Finally, I slowly lifted the bag from under the bed and set it down carefully next to the patio door where I could further inspect it. I looked at the outside, the top, bottom, every flap and every handle before I touched it with my bare hand. Then I pulled back the top to look inside. Using the shoe as a probe I began the search…and sure enough, there was my little black-eyed nemesis hiding inside. You have no idea how relieved I was! Not only that I could sleep in my room after all, but that he wasn’t dead, or even showed any signs of having been brandished with beachwear, which was good because I would’ve felt bad about killing a vertebrate. He actually looked kinda cute now that I had him trapped and I no longer had to worry about his slimy sucker feet pitter-pattering across my forehead in the middle of the night. In fact, I grabbed my phone so I could take a picture of him, but by the time I had it set up, he’d ducked under the inside lining. I wasn’t going to press my luck, so I tossed the whole bag out onto the patio. I’m hoping he’s smart enough to escape on his own. I hope to god he’s found his way out by the time I have to go and collect it.
I had seen another of his kind the other day when I was on the patio looking for something in the laundry closet, so I am afraid this might just be the first encounter with my lizard neighbors. I hope they at least have the courtesy to stay out of sight…I’m a firm believer in ‘ignorance is bliss.’ I did a quick google earlier to find out what the heck it was, and so, I present to you my lizard.
Obviously, not my exact lizard. Mine was uglier, scarier, slimier, grosser and in all ways generally more hideous, but at the same time kinda cute and pathetic. So guess what type of lizard it is. Go on…
It’s a gecko!!! Of all things. And it wasn’t trying to sell me car insurance in a cute cockney accent, either!
Tags: Florida, Fort Lauderdale, lizards, Travel
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