Tuesday, June 23, 2009

No More House Lizards!

The cat brought in another live lizard a couple of days ago. I heard him mumbly-meowing in the living room, went to see what was the matter, and was just in time to see him spit out the lizard and away it went.

I saw it once yesterday, running across the living room; and then could hear some scuffling behind my desk last night while at my computer. Then, this morning when I sat down and reached over to turn on the computer, the lizard was looking at me from atop the computer tower. Ack! I startled and so did he - he ran over the top of the computer and back down behind it. I could peer over the top and see him back down there amid the cords and dust bunnies, but had no way to reach him. Later, this afternoon, I saw him a couple more times up on the guest bed but wasn't fast enough to trap him (too nervous to pick him up bare-handed - I flinch and he's gone again). But with persistence (buoyed by the fear that a lizard is going to run across my face in my sleep), I managed to turn the coffee can I keep on my sewing machine as a scrap catcher into a lizard catcher - trapping him atop the pillows, slipping a magazine underneath, and gently transporting him out the front door. No more live cat toys in the house! Do you hear me, Albert?

7 comments:

Cathy said...

Hello Sadge
Do you think Albert took in that advice?
I don't enjoy getting the little love gifts that are occasionally dropped off at the back door - especially when they are still alive and flapping!
Take care
Cathy

Melynda@Scratch Made Food! said...

Your Albert is much braver than my Agate! They might look alike, and like to lay in the bathroom sink, but (fortunately) I do not get any gifts.

Annodear said...

But Mom... the live toys are so much more fun!!!

Nancy M. said...

I would not be too happy with my cat if he kept doing that. My son would love having a lizard in the house, though.

Anonymous said...

We had house lizards in my family's house in India and I was terrified - until I realized it ate the bugs I was even more scared of!

chris said...

There's a trick to catching lizards. It's harmless but takes patience. Lizards are warm blooded and they like the to bask in the sun. If you find your lizard basking, quietly sneak up on him/her and slowly enshaden his/her sunny spot for a few minutes. His body temp will drop enough so he/she won't move very fast. Reach down and pick him/her up. Simple.

Doyu Shonin said...

friend of mine wrote this only hours ago:

1

The lizards
want merely to mate
- with me it seems -

they are at the sill, staring
every morning with
their orange chin-bellows.
Every time I change
seats, they signal their
cronies or run 'round
real quick themselves
to the next station. When I try

to leave the house, I am
surrounded
by lizard paparazzi
jostling for position.


2

The geckos, now,
they are more coy. Remember how afraid

I was of them,
once upon a time?
Now, living as I do
on a houseboat,
they are looking b...no,
I won't go that far.
But because they do
eat their weight in bugs, I
have noticed that I am behaving
perhaps a bit ritualistically towards them,
sweeping the path before them
with discarded toothbrushes.

R.R.

June, 2009