Lovesick Lizards

I spent part of this beautiful Sunday morning decorating our front porch for Halloween. I don't know how it is in other parts of Texas, but here in Clear Lake, Halloween decorations are just one notch below on the must-have list for outdoor decorations. With each passing Halloween, we get fewer trick-or-treaters, which I think is very sad.

With the sometimes irrational ways of people in today's world, I do understand why parents don't want their children going door to door collecting Halloween candy. We don't have children, but if we did, I would only take them to friends and neighbors that we know, certainly not to houses where I've never met the people who live in them. As a result of this parental hesitation to let kids eat the Halloween candy they collect, I decided a few years ago to not give out anything edible. All year long, I find little dollar-store-type surprises: pencils with funny erasers, stickers, star-shaped sunglasses, tiny puzzles, rubber spiders, whistles. (The list is endless as to what you can find!) The kids love these little odds and ends, and they walk away from our door happy to get a 'trick' rather than another sweet 'treat.' It makes me feel good, too, because I know that the parents of these children won't be throwing the little toys away, as they might do with any or all of the candies in the Halloween bags.

Our local schools have Halloween parties for the kids, with students and teachers alike dressing in costume. I used to be a reading tutor at our neighborhood elementary school and the kids loved the Halloween parties. There was a certain magic in coming to school dressed as a ghost or a witch or Spiderman... or whatever/whomever their imaginations could conceive. And here in southeast Texas, on any given Halloween day, mostly everyone who doesn't have to go to work in office attire will show up wearing some sort of costume.

So there I was this morning, tacking up tiny pumpkins hanging from fishing line-- you can't see the fishing line, so the pumpkins look as if they're floating in the air below the porch roof. As I tacked up the second pumpkin, I saw a green lizard sitting on the drainpipe. He saw me, too, of course, and by the look on his face, and his position on the drainpipe, I was sure he had been there all along, watching me as I worked. I was also sure that this particular lizard was smitten with me. He never broke his stare, and he kept puffing out his pink chest every time I looked at him.

I kept looking at him to make sure he didn't move. I was not impressed with his puffy pink chest in the least. We've been in southeast Texas for eleven years now and I'm still not lizard-friendly. They move so darn fast. Before you can suck in your breath to let out a scream, a lizard can jump from a drainpipe to your arm and from your arm into the flower-bed. And you can just barely feel their tiny feet on your arm... it's like having a big maple leaf fall on you. But just the thought. Yuck. Double yuck. I'll take a maple leaf any day.

We have a screen-porch that wraps around the back of our house. The flooring of that porch is similar to that of a wood deck. Come to think of it-- it was just a wood deck before we had it roofed and screened. My cats go out on the screen-porch every day. From time to time, a baby lizard will find its way into the porch via the wood-slatted floor. As quick as a wink, my baby cat will pounce and catch it in his teeth. He doesn't eat it, he doesn't even hurt it. He brings it inside the house and places it near me, as if he's saying "Taa-daaaah! Look at what I've brought you." And, being the good cat-lover that I am, I say thank you and pretend not to be thoroughly disgusted at what my sweet cat has ceremoniously placed on my carpet.

This lizard-catching/displaying usually happens when I'm on the phone with either my friend "F" or my sister. Both live up in NY. They both probably think I'm living on a farm, rather than in Houston-chic Clear Lake. I have to say that I must look a bit ridiculous, with a cordless phone balanced on my left shoulder and a tupperware bowl in my right hand as I try to capture the lizard and bring him out on the front porch so I can release him.

The first time I told my sister that I was trying to catch the lizard, she said "What for? Don't you have enough pets in that house?" So I had to explain to my city-girl sister that I was catching the lizard so I could release him out in the front yard. "Why don't you just flush him? If you put him out in the front yard, he's just going to find his way back to the screen-porch again sooner or later." Flush him? So New York. They do that up there with roaches.

If my husband is home, I will ask him to catch the lizard for me. Which is a sight to behold, because he will try and catch the lizard in his hands and then carry it out to the front yard and let it go. He's quick enough to catch the lizards at times, but then I will follow him when he comes back in the door and I will say "Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!" Of course, a man being a man, he will have to hold out his hands to me as if he's going to touch me with those lizard-fingers before going for the bar of soap.

The lizard that was on the front porch drainpipe this morning stayed right where he was. He kept watching me as I worked.... and I kept an eye on him just to make sure he stayed put. With all of this staring back and forth, I'm sure the lizard thought we were engaged. I was using those little plastic push-pins to tack up the fishing line but parts of the porch roof were too hard to get those push-pins in far enough. I came in the front door and my husband was in the foyer. He asked me what I was up to. I told him I was hanging up pumpkins while a green lizard leered at me. I walked through the house to get the hammer out of the utility room, to help with those stubborn push-pins. Passing through the house again on my way to the front door, my husband saw the hammer in my hand and told me "Don't you think that's a little drastic for one tiny lizard who puffs up his chest at you?"