The tail of the lizard. . .

On Monday, I found this thing on the floor in the middle of the computer room. It looked liked a crayon minus it's wrapper, but on closer inspection, it didn't look like that at all. Was it a stick? A petrified hairball? an old green bean? I picked it up and broke it in half to figure out what it was. And that's when I dropped it and screamed. The inside looked like sushi. The outside looked like a headless sardine.

I made Erik pick it up and tell me what it was. He stared at it and couldn't figure it out either. It's a very odd experience to hold something in your hand and have no clue as to what you're looking at. We finally deduced that it was an alien tentacle and threw it away.

Fast forward two days. . . Erik was getting ready to go to work (this was his last week) and he went to reach for his bag and found this:

Eek!

So that thing we found two days earlier that I picked up and broke in half with my bare hands was it's TAIL! Ewwww! I guess Bella brought it in? Or it crawled through the doggie door? I've heard that lizards lose their tail when they're scared but I've never actually seen it, and certainly NOT the way I saw it all up close and personal. Gross!

So right there in our computer room we had a little showdown with the lizard. He stood there on Erik's bag staring at us while we frantically came up with ways to catch him. We may be pet lovers but we are not lizard people, especially when they come in uninvited and leave their tails lying around. McKenna could have picked it up and put it in her mouth! Yuck!

Are you still reading this? Do you need a barf bag?

Wild lizards are hard to catch. Erik tried, but he ran behind the filing cabinet. So Erik went to work and left me all alone with the lizard. Creeepy.

Hours later, after I had almost forgotten about it, I walked into my studio and found him slowly walking across the floor.

Covered in dog hair, haha. He couldn't fool me though, I knew it was the lizard. I opened the door and went to put the camera away and when I came back he was gone. I figured he saw the great outdoors and made a run for it.

Wrong! A few hours later I almost stepped on him! He hadn't left my studio at all but was hanging out under my sewing machines. Long story short - I shooed him out the door. Broomsticks and squealing were involved. This time I followed him all the way across the yard.

And the next day he came back! Ack! I found him hanging out by the door, inside my studio, sticking his tongue out at me as if to say, "Phhbblltt! I'm back!" I frantically trapped him in a container (much to the delight of McKenna, who thought my squealing was hilarious) and drove him to Petco where we learned he was an "alligator lizard," to which I said, "An Alligator!?" and then learned that no, just an "alligator lizard." They gave us some crickets to feed him and told us all the supplies we would need if we wanted to keep him, how much those supplies would cost, and how we'd have to feed him live crickets and mealworms every day.

Then we drove him to the park and let him go. See ya later Stumpy!

The end.