Hanging out on my ladder
Anoles, the tiny lizards who live at my house, are small little guys. The largest, most formidable ones are maybe five inches long nose to tail-tip. The fattest one I’ve ever seen was less stout than my index finger. I’ve talked about these creatures before, and I hope you aren’t tired of them, but they really are so lovable and funny that I end up spending time each day noticing them.
They enjoy our front patio as much as we do. Often I have to scoot one off a chair before I sit down, they scurry off though they aren’t very afraid of us and don’t go far. They run up and down the chair legs, stopping to gobble a passing ant. They seem to especially enjoy evenings when we have the lights on outside. Then, a contingent climbs the wall to hang out near the light so they can snack on the moths and other bugs that the light attracts. The males have this little fold of skin on their necks that they puff out into a kind of oblong, yellow balloon when they are trying to impress the ladies. It must work, because that was a common behavior a month or so back, and now we have a ton of little tiny lizards playing tag on our front patio. I hadn’t spent much time wondering about where anole babies come from, but I made a cool discovery last week. I was working on painting the outside of our house (a project that I’m proud to say I did by myself and is now finished!). I took down a light fixture and noticed that leaves and other debris had accumulated around the socket. (Thanks Hurricane Maria!) I turned the fixture over and bumped it to get the detritus out, and in addition to leaves, a host of egg shells fell out. Tiny, fragile, pea-sized, cracked and empty egg shells. What a discovery! I knew they couldn’t be from birds, the only possibility that makes sense is anoles. Clearly, the fixture had been a great place for an anole to lay her eggs. It’s a marvel to me how something could fit into an egg that size.
Teeny tiny egg shells
On Saturday, I wasn’t thinking about anoles. I was doing the last day of painting on the house. Overall, the job was an easy one except for two places. We live in an A-frame house, and the “A” on each end needed both white and yellow paint. That meant taping off the trim (which I did not paint), and then painting. For the apex of the “A”, that action occurred at the very top of the thirty foot ladder. Facing outward. Yes, as if it wasn’t scary enough being that high, I also needed to face outward and then lean out away from the ladder to tape and paint underneath the eve. Yikes. Dressed fashionably in a fall harness and sporting somewhat shaky legs, I climbed up and took several deep breaths, then slowly turned myself around on the ladder to start taping. Learning from having completed the other “A” already, I kept my eyes local, not letting myself glance toward the ground, took another breath, got the tape ready, then looked up at where I needed to put it. And. There was an anole. Just hanging out right there at the top, watching me. His presence unnerved me at first because I didn’t expect it, but it also made me smile and broke a little bit of the stranglehold my fear had on me. If I could have heard his thoughts, I image he’d have been questioning why I was there, so out of my realm. I also think I might have heard him invite me to play with him….(not a good idea since I’m not endowed with suckers on my feet). Anyway, I smiled and shooed him away, I just didn’t think I needed his company right then, and went on with my work.
I’m not at the top here, but you can see how high it is…
This picture isn’t at all flattering, but fear never is!
Now that I’m safely back on the ground, the ladder is put away and I like the paint job on the house, I’m thankful that the job is done, that I didn’t fall off the ladder, and that God created anoles. I realize that their brains are miniscule, and that experts probably would say they are incapable of emotions or rational thought. I’m sure a biologist would claim that they are simply following instinct. That may be true, but from my perspective, anoles are fun lovers. In their quick movements and fearless antics, they exhibit an excitement about life that somehow telegraphs joy and frivolity. Hmmm, now that my work is done, I think I’ll act more like an anole than a human, and go play!
Hi! Want to play?
