My aunt’s tiny farmhouse in west Texas always smelled faintly of dust, but then dust was a west Texas specialty. It probably didn’t help that we boys slept on the floor during our infrequent visits, huddled in the room’s center to avoid things creeping from their lairs at dusk. There were scorpions, mostly the smaller, more poisonous kind, and behind the house foot-long poisonous centipedes that sometimes found their way indoors. Spiders were ubiquitous, including black widows, which we knew to avoid. But the most terrifying nightcrawler of all, the one we could hear rustling around the baseboards and clicking across the wooden floors, was the dreaded vinegarroon.
Also known as whip-scorpions, vinegarroons are nonpoisonous but capable of producing painful pinches. What separates them from their more dangerous cousins is their size: the Latin name for the trans-Pecos variety is “giganteus,” a word requiring no translation. Hearing them scuttling about in the dark was an exercise in the mind’s unlimited potential for imagining the worst; seeing them was proof that reality often trumps imagination.
I was a typical boy interested in typical boy things: guns, hunting, the outdoors, reptiles. I was, in fact, something of a master lizard catcher. My collection varied over the years but usually included horned lizards (horny toads, as we called them, but not the sharp-pronged, irascible Mexican species), bluetails and collared lizards. The latter were my favorite, but much harder to catch.
Every outdoorsman has a one-that-got-away story. Mine was a particularly large collared lizard that ran my older brother, my father and I ragged over a large dusty patch of Texas near my aunt’s house. The thing must have been close to 20 inches long (caution: these tales get taller with age), and when alarmed, as it most certainly was, it took to its hind legs and cruised off like a miniature T-Rex. We bolted after it, flanking it, trying to hem it in, scrambling from creosote to mesquite and back, and might have caught it in the end if not for the biggest, baddest, meanest, most dense clump of catclaw ever invented. The lizard dashed inside and dared us to follow with a reptilian look of unadulterated smugness.
Our failure to capture it was a blow Freud would diagnose as an unrecoverable loss. Afterward, the mere sight of a collared lizard triggered an irrepressible motivation to pursue, regardless of what I was doing at the time. When on vacation with my parents in southern New Mexico a collared lizard dashed across the road in front of us, without thinking I slammed on the brakes and ejected myself from the vehicle before it fully stopped rolling. The lizard quickly eluded me; it took hours for my family to recover.
For two glorious summers I had a pet collared lizard about 14 inches in length. We went everywhere together, even on walks after I fashioned a small leash for it. People would stare unbelieving at us as it tagged along on its hind legs, its long tail following in long sweeps. We were best of friends, or so I like to think.
Age distances us from our past. In some matters it’s more a matter of losing ability than in losing interest. Shortly after moving to Kansas a decade ago we were hiking at Konza Prairie south of Manhattan when I saw a collared lizard streak past. Besides the obvious shock of seeing what I considered a southwestern speciality on the tallgrass prairies of the Midwest, there was a split second where time seemed to gel and wallow to a stop as my brain sorted through the implications. And then I was off like a shot, gloating for a brief interlude that here at last were no mesquite or catclaw with their razored thorns, no Spanish dagger or jumping cholla to rend and tear, only an endless expanse of grass.
Several embarrassing minutes later I clutched my chest and collapsed in a sweaty heap. All I’d managed to do was to provide a little entertainment for the lizard and to frighten my wife, who questioned my sanity and my ability to breathe. The air was so thick and soupy I felt I was drowning.
“My days of catching lizards are over,” I gasped, a lamentation utterly unfathomable to my wife.
But if I thought that was the last word on the subject, I was wrong. While reorganizing our patio this week I came across several creatures of interest, from fledgling praying mantises to a gray tree frog which I relocated from a trashcan to a mulberry. Most surprising was a small collared lizard that had fallen into a plastic tub. The rim was too high for it to escape so it sat there in the brutal heat without food or water. Without giving it much thought I scooped it up and set it in the grass, where it zipped off into the flower garden.
Holding it, even momentarily, brought a surge of memories. A little of the magic had returned, a touch of confidence that I still had it in me—disregarding the fact that the lizard was trapped in an enclosed space, that is.
And then an odd thing happened. Whenever I went outside the little lizard seemed to pop up out of nowhere. It followed me around utterly without fear, letting me approach within inches before shying away. I began to sense it was watching for me. For all I knew it might think I’m its mother.
One afternoon it was perched on the edge of the top step, so I sat down beside it. After studying me for a few minutes its eyes closed in what appeared to be contentment. I slowly reached out one finger to touch it, holding my breath, making no sound, but when my finger was an inch from its back the lizard opened its eyes and leaped back.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “No touching.”
But I could have had it. I could have.
9 comments:
I remember you used to have a horny toad you named Ballooner, because of her propensity to have multiple births, and she'd get as big as a balloon. If you recall, you took her when we went to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument one year, and had her and her babies in a plastic tub under the trailer. When we returned, ants had swarmed her and had killed a few of her babies, but Ballooner was eating them as fast as she could to try and keep them off of her babies. She was quite the horny toad, and I still remember her 50 years later. She was quite the gal.
Yep. Even mama was pulling ants off the babies, and she was fairly squeamish when it came to bugs. You might recall how on cold mornings the collared lizards were folded into curlicues and we warmed them with the oven in the trailer.
I remember when the next door neighbor boy went to Louisiana, I believe, and brought us home a lizard from there. Some little green guy. We put it in the cage with the collared lizards and after a few minutes I noticed the only part visible of the lizard was the tail sticking out of our of our lizards mouth. Sure didn't last long.
I still have a soft spot for collared lizards, but I really like horny toads. I've even managed to catch a couple out here while they're sunning themselves. I've given up on ever catching a lizard again. Too much effort!
I had a friend who grew up with horny toads for pets, up in the Texas panhandle. He'd catch ants for them.
I've never seen one in the wild, but I ran into one of those long old centipedes at the place outside Kerrville. It looked pure science fiction to me, and grade B at that. Just creepy. There were centipedes around there, too. One of the first things I learned while I was trying to turn myself into a country gal was to always check my boots before putting them on. You never knew who was living in there. ;-)
Can you imagine having one of those foot-long centipedes snake down your collar or skinny up a leg?
Can you go to sleep now?
I'd forgotten about checking footwear for creepy-crawlies. I still do it sometimes after getting bit on the foot by a brown recluse.
I grew up in far SW Kansas (Plains, in Meade County) and we were only the Oklahoma Panhandle away from Texas.
We had road runners, prickly pears, and horny toads too. Probably did have collared lizards but I don't remember seeing them. We kept a horny toad in a little cage for a while once, until our overly curious dog managed to tip the cage over and open the door, whereupon it was returned to the wild.
The only lizards I have a clear childhood memory of were some little lizards who shed their tails if you caught them. I hated seeing that wriggling tail!
I'm happy to report I never saw a scorpion in Plains, either.
That's an area of Kansas I've rarely been to, but it sounds like the southwest all over again. This state has it all except mountains, I suppose, and even then with a little (okay, a lot) of imagination one can include Mount Sunflower. If I had a dime for every lizard that got away leaving me a wriggling tail I'd be rich! Yeah, kinda gross.
Reece -- As I recollect, it was a chameleon brought all the way from Louisiana. I'd forgotten that collared lizards are cannibalistic--that poor little green thing never hit the bottom of the cage. Seemed a shame, but such is life.
Maybe we can chase lizards at Ojito this year. Or not. I might prefer chasing chile rellenos and green chile cheeseburgers.
Millipede. Centipedes and MILLIPEDES!!!
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