A Lizard Story

Once upon a time, in the Age of Quarantine, there lived a girl and her little sister who were obsessed with catching a skink. As this was the best science-based STEM lesson available, their mother approved of the hours spent building a skink trap, the girls patiently waiting for a skink to skurry under the stick and bucket. Hands on the rope, ready to pull and capture their prey. This was a wholly futile effort as skinks are amazingly fast and impossible to keep in a box as they will just slither right out. But alas, it was the Age of Quarantine, and what else was there to do? Their minds were working, they were exhibiting teamwork, and it allowed their tired mother some respite from their lessons. 

They didn't catch a skink.

About a month into lockdown, the natives were getting restless, so they ventured out to the farm with the grandparents. The little girl and her sister brought along the skink trap as well as a box in hopes that farm skinks were slower than city skinks. 

They were not.

But...there was something reptilian lurking beneath the pallets. And they were rather slow. So the little girl caught one. She put it in the skink box and went after the slightly smaller reptile under the plywood and caught that one too. He was put into the skink box as well. 

      

Soon, the girls began to pile rocks and pine straw on the bare floor of the cardboard box to make the newfound lizards feel at home. The girls wanted to hold the lizards and examine them constantly. But the mother warned them against holding too much, as the lizards may get hurt or fall from their grasp and run away. 

It was almost time to leave the farm when the little sister noticed another small lizard basking in the sun on a concrete block by the shed. She was determined to catch this one, but he was too fast. He ran away up the Dogwood Tree. And the little girl stomped away disappointed. But that same lizard, not being a smart lizard, but a feisty one, was back on that concrete block basking in the sun no less than five minutes later. And that is when the little sister employed the help of her much older, stealthier cousin to catch this reptile. In no time, the cousin had the third lizard in his grasp and soon enough, all three were boxed up and on the road to their new home. Much to their father's chagrin.

Pure Joy

A quick Google search revealed that these reptiles were Eastern Fence Lizards, clearly a slower species than the swift skink. But the children were appeased and the naming process began.  The largest lizard was identified as a female (also through the power of Google) as she had a white tummy (a very round white tummy) of which the children's mother had suggested might be carrying babies. No one believed the mother. The little sister named this lizard Fiona. 

 

The other two smaller juvenile lizards had blue on their necks, so based on the Google information available were identified as males. The older sister named one Blue (as it had a slightly blue tint) and the mother named the one who got away through its feistiness Fiesty McGee. 

Once home, the girls were given, through the kindness of their neighbors, a real aquarium and light to house the lizards properly. Some Amazon lizard food soon arrived in the mail, but in the meantime, the girls had little issue with digging up worms and bugs to feed lizards to make them feel at home. 

The lizards adjusted to their new home, and as soon as the mother convinced the girls not to pick them up anymore, they seemed relatively happy. 

The girls learned so much about Eastern Fence Lizards in those first few weeks:

1. They burrow under the soil at night. As soon as dusk settles, they disappear. The family learned this after they gave them quite a fright on that first morning. The lizards were nowhere to be seen. Had they escaped? How? The walls are so high. But alas, no. They were under the earth. Sleeping. Hidden.

2. The end of their tails will fall off as a defense mechanism to escape predators (ie the children). Only Fiona had the end of her tail after the first day. Both Blue and Fiesty McGee grew a new one months later, which leads to...

3. When the end of the tail grows back, which it will, the coloring is not the same as the rest of the skin; it's brownish-gray and plain. Nothing fancy.

4. They love to sunbathe. Sun wakes them up, but they are awful sluggish when cold. Which is why one morning about a month after the lizards came, the mother was not too worried when the girls said that Fiesty McGee hadn't moved in two days. They were slow-moving in the mornings before the sun warmed their skin or the heating lamp did the same.  But on this morning, the children had a right to be worried, for when the mother poked Fiesty McGee with a stick, he just flopped like a little rubber toy. Yep, he was dead. So the sisters dug a hole, said a prayer, and buried Fiesty McGee under the dirt marked by a hand-sized rock with RIP at the top. What had killed him, no one knows, but the other two who had been together from the get-go might have taken his food. But that is just speculation. RIP Fiesty.

5. They "gape" when they are too hot. It looks like a dog panting except their tongues aren't hanging out. This was when it was decided that taking the heating lamp out was the correct course of action. It was plenty warm outside for them.

6. They shed their skin in the summer. Like a snake. It is gross. 

7. The children should have listened to their mother. Fiona was definitely a girl, and she was definitely pregnant. The mother and father discovered this one evening, coming home from a dinner date. There Fiona was, attached to the water bowl, back against the glass, in the most awkward position, eggs everywhere. 

So, lizard babies were supposed to hatch in 10 weeks. They did not. The family suspects Fiesty McGee and Blue may have eaten some. Fiona could have too as lizard mothers are not very maternal. 

For three months the children watched them and cared for them every single day. They fed them bugs when they could catch them. They replaced the water, cleaned the bowl, and never picked them up again. Until...

 It was time to let them go. They may have become too domesticated. They would eat right out of the girls' hands. So the girls picked them up one last time and took them to the backyard, where maybe they would stick around for a while so the family could still observe their science project. And so far, they have stayed, and basked in the sun on the tree right outside the kitchen window and on the deck.

You stayed. Awww, you stayed.