Smiling Lizard

I know May is here when a lizard gets trapped on the wrong side of the screened porch and climbs around on the screens all day trying to enter the blue and green world she can see but not get to. I then have a choice: Leave her there ("If it was smart enough to find its way in, it's smart enough to find its way out," Demetrius used to yawn) or help her out, but first, take glamour photos--of this lovely Northern Fence Lizard (Scleporus undulatus hyacinthinus) that seemed to smile as if it had a sense of humor about its predicament. After that I waited until she climbed onto the screen door, then I opened the door and tickled her until she dropped off the screen onto the stoop and went running, and I suddenly thought twice--about its needs, not mine--although it was too late, and said, "Take it easy. Birds can eat you."

Please Don't Kill Me

Friend says there are snakes in her yard and she has her brother out killing them because they're worried about snakes biting their dogs. I asked, do you have woodpiles or stone bluffs nearby? She said yes. I said, snakes are just waking up after the winter's nap and simply passing through your yard. Please don't kill them. Now awake and slithering through is one of my blacksnakes -- the house snake here, just as a restaurant has a house wine. Harmless. It stood still and posed, head raised, while I took its ceremonial first-day-awake photo. Go eat those mice, bro' you're looking a little thin.

People hate snakes because they slither and they bite. But that's what snakes do. They have no alternative! Leave them alone, don't poke them or grab them, don't let your dogs play with 'em. "Don't let my dogs? But my dogs aren't under my control all the time." Excuse me, but they should be, in country as well as city. I'll bash your free-running dog that's running at me before I'll bash a snake.

These Skinks Had Better Learn

Looking up from my work I saw a skink climbing a screen on the porch. At first I couldn't tell if the skink was inside or outside. If it's inside, it's an emergency--for the skink. Often these lizards can find their ways indoors, but I've had a few visiting skinks who seemed unable to find their ways out and required my assistance.

This skink was inside looking out. Of course it shied when I approached, and tried to flee, but could only crawl madly across and around the edges of the screen, so close to but so far from the great green universe it wanted to escape to. And here came this gigantic hairy bag of salt water hundreds of times larger than the skink. I knew I looked to it like a monster, and spoke kindly to it, unhooking the screen on both sides and laying it down so it made a nice ramp to the outdoors. Still the skink clung to the screen. I tapped the screen. I shook the frame a little. No dice. I said, like my mother, "In or out. One or the other. Make up your mind. I don't have all day." This did it. It scrambled off.

These skinks have to understand that I run a tight ship here with no room for slackers or nervous Nellys.

Find the Greensnake

Suddenly I saw it in the poison ivy, which is still pale green and a bit sparse. It was hanging festooned in there, so well camouflaged it took my country-sharpened eye to see it. I got my camera. So eager was I to get theses photo for us that I poison-ivied my right forearm, the first poison ivy of the year. Worth it. And to watch it slink away suspended in poison ivy branches--priceless. In the vertical picture the snake twines up from the bottom of the photo, around a branch.

Midnight Snake

Still up at 1:30 a.m., trying to make June last as long as possible, and was surprised to find a visitor in the dining room, specifically on the dining-room floor. This is a baby blacksnake, about 8 inches long. As far as I have seen, young blacksnakes can be gold or silver and they have thin stripes around their necks. Snakes are rare indoor visitors here, but usually appear in the house a day or two after heavy rain, possibly displaced from their cozy nooks by water, or they are hunting spiders or other crawly creatures already in the house.

Do creepy-crawlies bother me? Not really. I once kept company with a herpetologist who was very thin and when he got angry wanted to bite things, no lie. I preferred my own company. Large snakes make me catch my breath, and I am not exactly pleased finding five-inch wolf spiders inside my stereo speakers, but otherwise I accept them, except for ants in my kitchen. They get doused with vinegar or bleach.