One day last spring, while writing morning pages on the bench with the dogs, I noticed a new lizard the size of a gecko hanging around the rock. It didn’t look like a gecko though. It was brown instead of green, and more angular and craggy, like a tiny dinosaur. Every once in awhile it stopped crawling and did what looked like the humpy push-up dance made popular by boy bands in the late nineties. (An example of which you can watch at 2 min, 35 sec in the following video. And might I add that I dig this performance far more now than as a teenager. Must be the power of a smaller musichead ego on my behalf, JT's successful solo career, and nostalgia.)
I found this a bit unusual, but it did not prepare me for what happened when Harley started to stalk him. Mr. Lizard did the push-up hump and then he stopped and blew out this big, bright orange and green bubble from his neck like a 10-year-old showing off her Bubbalicious skills. Oh my spirits, I was so bewitched by this fantastic display from such a small and ugly beast that I thanked the Universe aloud for the creation.
I’ve since learned that this type of lizard is an anole. The throat bubble is a dewlap, and the act is called flaring. It’s a territorial thing the males do when threatened.
Communing with nature certainly has its rewards.
Communing with nature certainly has its rewards.
just when you think you have seen everything, bam nature throws you a new pitch. and you think wow that is so cool. thats one thing i miss about driving truck, all the new things you get to see.
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