The Life of a Lizard

A lizard sat in the sun. Yellow and black stripes ran the 6-inch length of its back and tail---the sides of its neck and belly were sky blue. It did nothing to catch my attention, being almost perfectly camouflaged in the sandy soil, dry grass, and bits of gray blue Spanish moss that litter the ground. My eyes just fell on it somehow.

I watched it for some time. It didn't move much, except for an occasional change of position. Then all at once it made a purposeful beeline for another area in the grass, about ten feet from where it had been. There, it scurried around in fits and starts as if looking for something in the sand. A few fast steps in one direction. Stop short. Look around. Another few steps in a different direction. Stop. Look. Listen. It repeated this pattern many times, looking more frantic with each scurry, until it looked quite deranged, actually. It went on so long I was about to tire of watching. Then as fast as it started, the search ended, and the fellow disappeared vertically into a lizard-sized hole in the sand.

Was that it? The poor thing was trying to find its doorway all that time? If I had to go through as much to find my way home, I might never leave. Lucky a human was sitting nearby or this little reptile might have become lunch for a hawk---or my bald eagle. All that movement surely destroyed the lizard's own camouflage. A lose-your-door, lose-your-life sort of arrangement. Glad I'm not a lizard. dkm