Yesterday morning you may have heard a blood-curdling scream coming from East Texas. Sorry about that. It was early here too. But it was a righteous scream.
You see, as I was sweeping the kitchen floor (because who doesn't sweep the floor at 4 a.m.?), a lizard ran across my path. I wasn't expecting to see anything at that hour, especially a Texas critter.
Marty, who had been sleeping comfortably, was rudely awakened, thinking there was a mountain lion or sabretooth tiger in the house. Silly man. Any critter is too many critters for me.
As for me, I had trapped the lizard under the dust mop, saving our family from peril while waiting for Marty to get out of bed, find his glasses, stumble into the kitchen, then nose around until he found a something to put the lizard into.
When all of the above was completed, I lifted part of the dust mop for Marty to finish the rest. Instead of the lizard being removed, out popped the wiggling tail, which was that second set of blood-curdling screeches you might have heard. "A snake!" I yelled.
"No, it's the lizard's tail," Marty said.
"Oh no! Poor lizard. I severed its tail?"
Marty assured me that wasn't the case. Apparently--and how did I get to be this many years old before I learned this?--there are several types of lizards that can drop their tails to trick their predators. Their tails actually do wiggle in a super-creepy way that goes on for far too long.
My hero, Marty Sunshine was able to take the tail and the lizard and dispose of them into the back yard, letting it have a turf fight with the moles. Then Marty went back to bed and asked that if I saw another lizard to please wait until a reasonable hour to alert him. He's out of luck on that one, I reminded him. When I agreed to live in Texas, I did not sign up for critters.
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