Food for: small-to medium-sized carnivores
Features: shy, retiring, eats insects
I stared in bemusement as a piece of my carpet stood up and skittered away. I knew I was a bad housekeeper, but now the dustbunnies seemed to be fleeing the place in terror. It was an omen of some sort. I followed the moving patch of carpet warily.
It turned left into the hallway, darting past Tuan (the lawn ornament that walks like a cat) who ogled it with big blue eyes. He leaped high into the air and pounced - and missed. The carpet fluff slid into a crack and vanished. Tuan prowled around the spot wailing something that was probably cat for "bring it back, Mommy! I didn't have a good chance to play with it!"
As he passed the spot again, his carpet-colored playmate suddenly lunged toward me and skittered across my foot, finally revealing itself. My housekeeping was still not up to snuff and my ability to form life from dust was going to be in question. The visitor was a finger-length-sized lizard (a Texas Gecko (did you know there was an international gecko society?) that was hotfooting on its fat little toes for the safety of the couch. Tuan lunged after it and ran into my legs. In the confusion, the gecko got away again. Tuan and I blamed each other for the mix-up.
As a rule, cold-blooded animals aren't quite as intelligent as warm-blooded animals. I figured it couldn't take that long to uncover one lizard under the couch. I didn't count on its ability to corner like a stunt driver on a caffeine jag and in the end my strategy was reduced to trying to scare the lizard toward the open door. Only the lizard seemed to like the house (Tuan and all) better than the great outdoors. It was a classic contest of mammal versus reptile -- and the reptile was winning, darn it!
I eventually cornered the little creature on a wall (where it was pretending to be an original sculpture) and evicted it into the mint patch outside, where geckos (in my opinion) belong. As he skittered off into the greenery, a green anole lizard on the wall nearby executed a few disdainful pushups to show us who was the boss. I bobbed my head at him and he vanished into the evening primroses, looking for another anole to dominate.
Whereas your average human's threat/dominance display usually involves yelling or pounding on things or driving cars with names that sound like glandular extractions, lizards do pushups. Watching two lizards contest dominance is like watching a pushup
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