Delilah writes:  "I’m attaching a picture of a lizard. I took it while walking near my house. Do you know what it is?"

I do believe this is none other than a Broadhead Skink (Eumeces laticeps).

Ever want to catch a live, wild iguana?

Easy.  Go down to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park on Key Biscayne when the weather gets cold.  They rain from the trees, and lay dormant on the ground until the sun comes out and warms them up.

According to the Miami Herald, the locals aren’t too fond of the iguanas, complaining they munch the local hedges and gardens.  One commenter says, "If they are a pest why not cull them while they are laying around comatose?"

Dude, they’re lizards, not rats.  I’d fill a sack with them, take ‘em home, and start my own iguana ranch.

I’ve heard that snakes will swallow strange things, like, oh, alligators, and I personally saw a little garter snake trying to eat a sparrow way too large for it to ever successfully swallow.

Here, however, is a National Geographic article about a Australian Carpet Python who has a taste for golf balls:  Python Undergoes Golf Ball-ectomy

Florida veterinarian John Rossi was confronted by a seven year old girl named Finley and her pet lizard, Mushu, who she thought was giving birth.  It looked like another tail was protruding from beneath Mushu’s tail.

Rossi sedated the bearded dragon and began pulling on the second tail, and was rewarded with a pair of rubber legs.  That’s when he and Finley’s father, Jeff Collins, started laughing.

Mushu, named after the little dragon in Disney’s animated movie Mulan, had eaten a toy rubber lizard and it had passed all the way through the bearded dragon’s intestinal tract.

Rossi wasn’t too surprised, as he says bearded dragons often swallow odd things, such as suction cups and coins.  Still, this was the first rubber lizard he’d ever “delivered.”

This begs the question, what is the strangest thing your pet has ever eaten (and passed)?

If you want to see wonderful pictures of lizards from all around the world, visit The Lizard Pool on Flickr. As a photographer myself, I’m humbled and amazed by the beautiful and fun images from these globe-spanning artists. At the time of this writing there are over 1300 photos from 449 photographers. Some are so good you’d expect to see them in National Geographic.

With any luck, I’ll be adding to the photos myself. For the first time in years I plan take my camera out lizard hunting today.

I have this video of me, standing in the patio of the Dallas apartment with my older daughter, and a little American Chameleon (Anolis carolinis) has hold of my finger in his tiny mouth and will not let go. No matter which way I turn my hand, that little guy is hanging on, biting as hard as he can, probably with the intention of eating me before I can eat him. Of course it didn’t hurt – it was barely a pinch – and Danielle and I were laughing about it.

I had not realized there were Anoles in Dallas, and it was a pleasant surprise. You see, back when I was a lizard hunting kid in California, the only place you’d see these exotic little color changers were in pet stores, and in advertisements in the back of Boy’s Life Magazine. Back then, my friends and I would all pool our money together and send away for them. I even remember the name of the company: The Louisiana Biological Center. I’d send them money, and then we’d wait … and wait … and wait for them to come in the mail.

Yes, the mail.

They’d arrive in a cardboard tube with cheesecloth at both ends. We’d order 12, but they’d send 15, just in case some died on the way. Open it up, dump it into a terrarium, and out would come 15 hopping lizards along with a bunch of moss and sometimes a sponge. We’d divvy them up and most wouldn’t survive more than a month or so. I had some that survived years, but eventually I’d let them go, which wasn’t as nice as it seems since they don’t live very well in Northern California. Too dry a climate.

The first time I’d actually caught one outside a postage container was during a trip to Hawaii. It pretty much ruined my Hawaiian trip because I then became obsessed with finding more of them. Ah, wasted youth.

So, as a father in North Dallas, and finding Anoles running wild in the suburbs, I took my kids lizard hunting on the trails along the local creek. Because of the lizard’s ability to jump into bushes and disappear, you can’t use the sneak-around-and-grab method which works with bluebellies in California. No, you have to go “lizard looping.” That is, you put a little loop of string in a slip-knot at the end of a stick (a fishing pole works perfectly) and, upon seeing a lizard, you reach out with this stick and put the loop around its head.

The lizard, you see, usually pays no attention to the stick or the loop, because it’s too busy watching the big monster creeping up on it (you). It doesn’t associate the stick with something you’re controlling. It just thinks it’s a branch, one of many surrounding it, and the loop is just like a blade of grass. That is, until the loop is around the lizard’s neck and you give it a little pop, closing the loop firmly around the neck and trapping it.

The last time I remember doing this, we caught several of them along the creek, and then riding our bicycles back toward the apartment complex my kids and I spotted a anole out on the pavement. It was rather odd, and so I rode slowly up to it and – swear to God, I have my kids as witnesses – the lizard jumped onto my pant leg and climbed up on me, and so I rode off with it clinging to my back. It stayed on me all the way home, and to this day it remains the one lizard that caught me instead of me catching it.

My opinion is that it’s okay to catch and keep common native lizards, especially if you catch them in your own neighborhood, and when you’re finally bored with them (or realized you just don’t have the patience to feed them several times a day) you can let them go again right outside and they’ll do just fine.

The odd thing is, anoles were everywhere in Dallas, a suburban area, but now that I live up in McKinney which is rural and right next to open woods, there’s none. In fact, I’ve been here years now and I only recently saw my first lizard, a small red-tailed skink, while walking through the woods.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis

Out of all the reptiles I’ve caught and studied as a budding young Herpetologist, these wonderful little blue-bellied lizards were the hardiest and ultimately the most fascinating. Found nearly everywhere in California (with variations across most of North America) these rough-scaled, fast, nimble lizards get their name from brilliant patterns of blue on their relatively soft, smooth stomachs. I’d been catching them for years before I finally realized what the blue on their bellies was for. It was obvious in retrospect, but at the time it was a big revelation.

After being uprooted twice, once from my desert home of Tucson, and then from the crowded, foggy cityscape of the bay area, my family finally settled in Stockton which is right in the middle of California’s central valley. I was about nine or so, and the first thing I did in this new place was to search out the local critters. The bluebelly was the first reptile I discovered, and the first Californian lizard I caught and kept. So you could say that these lizards were my first boyhood friends after the move.

The official name for the bluebelly is the Western Fence Swift (Sceloporus occidentalis). I checked out piles of books from the library, reading all I could about them. Then I begged and pleaded for a terrarium so that I had something decent to keep them in.

Females are generally more brown and colorless, and have a wider lower stomach. They have little, if any, blue on their bellies. The more feminine the female, the less blue. Conversely, the more macho the male, the more blue and black are on their bellies. Some are so heavily colored that they’re actually gaudy. This should have clued me in on the real use of these decorations, but it never even occurred to me.

Keeping one or two at a time was okay, but I had to develop a lot of patience to actually see them do anything. I had my terrarium set beside my bed, and I would spend literally hours just lying there and watching. Then I would dump in some food, usually flies and crickets but occasionally some mealworms, and they would chow down and then settle again. Most people would consider them boring to watch, because when they know you’re there they don’t move a lot. They remain clinging to logs or sticks pretending they’re invisible. Which in some cases they are, because their camouflage can be close to perfect when sitting on a log.

What I discovered later on, though, is you get a lot more entertainment value when you have four or five really macho males in the terrarium, and one or two full-grown females. Have them under a comfortable heat lamp (not too hot!) and give them plenty of food and water. Give them a bit of time to get used to their surroundings.

Then settle down and watch the fun.

I had never seen bluebellies go into full battle mode before. Normally they just nod their heads at each other, but when two or more challengers face off it becomes an all-out contest of intimidation. What they do is hilarious. They flatten themselves out vertically, so that their back is arched and their belly is pushed way down, which makes them appear physically larger. When their bellies are extended vertically like this, the blue can plainly be seen. That’s what it’s for. It’s to say two things:

To females: “Hey babe, wanna party?”

To other males: “Don’t you even think of messing with me!”

They leap, skitter sideways, push and shove, and occasionally snap at their opponent’s tail. It happens all over the terrarium, very fast, and sand and gravel goes flying. The other lizards are caught between being interested and getting out of the way. I had one stubborn old male who had no intention of getting involved, and remained where he was, eyes closed in annoyance, even as the other two repeatedly ran him over.

The mating dance is very similar, but it includes a lot more rapid head nodding while the female (generally) wants to be somewhere else.

Since these were wild animals, I never kept them for very long. I would routinely let them go where I’d caught them, and more often than not I’d end up catching them again later. I’d check them for ticks, apply medicine when needed, keep them for a while and then let them go again. Some I would let go in the wood pile in the back yard, and be tickled to later see tiny little babies running around. These would grow up and start another generation in the wood pile. I kept this up for years.

I never really grew out of Herpetology, and I’m amazed about how popular it’s gotten (and how much more sophisticated the amateur Herpetologists have become). I’m not actively hunting anymore, because I had a bad experience: About ten years ago I was in Houston and was amazed to find Mediterranean geckos running around the walls of the hotel at night. I was trying to coax one out of a crack with a stick when a man came barging out and accused me of trying to break into his daughter’s room. When I explained to him what I was doing I felt incredibly stupid. So now if I don’t have one of my kids with me, I’m not hunting lizards.

Supposedly there’s bluebellies out here in Texas but I haven’t seen one yet. Lots of Anoles, which are interesting lizards too, but no bluebellies. And you know, I really miss them.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis

Summer nights in a small suburb of Tucson, Arizona, way back in 1967, out of my house would stalk a mighty hunter. Six years old, wearing shorts and a tee shirt, high-top tennis shoes, and carrying a flashlight, a bucket, and a butterfly net, I stalked off through the streets in search of prey. It was toads I was after, big ugly warty toads. And they were out there, hundreds of them, hopping from out of the desert and through the neighborhood, all answering Mother Nature’s annual call of love.

During the day the only time you would see one of these puffy, awkward creatures was on the road, smashed flat as a pancake. You’d see a lot of them, everywhere, rows of them where cars would score more than one at a time. It was disgusting. Of course as a young boy I was fascinated by that, too.

But at night they were big, round, and alive. Not quite frogs, and not quite lizards, these toads had short legs and didn’t jump as their froggy cousins did. No, they hopped. Quick, furtive, nimble little hops. Like this: Hop hop hop hop hop!

Being a born Herpetologist (even though back then I couldn’t even pronounce it, let alone know what it meant) I didn’t find these creatures at all ugly. They were adorable! I liked their weird bumpy skin, their gleaming eyes, and their humble just-leave-me-alone body language. To dogs, I knew, they were deadly poison. I remember at least once my dad sticking a running garden hose down my poor dog’s throat after catching him chewing on a toad. There was poison in those bumps, and if you broke them it would come out and kill you. That is, if you happen to be chewing on it. Being that I had no intention of doing that (and this being a long time before people found they could get high by licking them) I knew I was safe.

I remember walking along the sidewalks, catching them in my net and dumping them into my bucket. I also remember dodging tarantulas and other assorted big bugs. One was a long beetle with huge pinchers in front, and if you picked these up and got them mad they’d hiss at you. I also remember some of my friends out under a streetlight with their father’s fly fishing pole, whipping the fly around in the air and catching bats (who thought the fly lure was a moth, no doubt). But mainly I caught toads. Dozens of them. Literally, dozens, all piled up and hopping in a mass at the bottom of the bucket.

Then I’d bring the bucket of toads home and put them in the backyard. One time my sister Cara was curious as to what exactly was in this bucket I kept bringing in at night, and looked down into it as it sat on the concrete of the back patio. I can still hear her piercing scream. “My God!” she shrieked. “That bucket is full of toads!” By the hysterical tone of her voice, it was like she’d found a bucket full of severed human heads. She did a frightened dance on her tiptoes and escaped into the house, complaining loudly about the Bucket ‘O’ Toads.

More than thirty years later, I still find this highly amusing.

I remember one time I was out later than my curfew. I was late and I knew it. I don’t remember why I was late; there must have been something extra interesting, because it was a conscious decision not to leave just yet. Then when I arrived home and my father said I was late and that meant a spanking, I voluntarily submitted, putting myself over his knee and telling him I was ready. That made him laugh; he thought it was hilarious. But the spanking still hurt.

Since being a 6 year old toad hunter I’ve learned that I was right about the creatures. They really aren’t hideous little monsters. In fact, they’re a boon to us because of the hundreds of tons of bugs they eat every year, including cockroaches. That’s hundreds of tons of bugs that would otherwise be crawling around our homes.

Yes, this toad hunter has retired his net and bucket, but every once in a while I’ll happen upon one of these little guys, and I’ll pick it up and say hello. They’re welcome around my house. That is, as long as they stay outside.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis

Out lizard hunting one morning I saw a pair of very fast, thin snakes which crossed the dirt road in front of me, side by side, their heads held high off the ground. The two looked like a team, and this sent a thrill through me. I’d never seen snakes do this before. Their movements and attitude denoted high intelligence, and they looked somehow professional, like pack hunters.

All the snakes I was familiar with were loners and they kept low to the ground, moving in the traditional slithering way of snakes. In contrast, these two held themselves up like cobras, and even when they crossed over into the tall grass I could see their little black heads darting back and forth, very alert. They saw me coming after them and zoomed quickly to a nearby tree.

There was nothing slow about these snakes. It didn’t take them more than a few seconds to slide right up that tree and into the branches. Then they did something really interesting: they froze.

The only reason I could see them in the tree is because I’d watched them climb. To anyone else they’d be invisible. Their bodies were telling the world, “We’re tree limbs! There’s nothing interesting here. Go about your business.” Even as I approached the tree they maintained this façade. Even as I began to climb.

There was one snake lower than the other, and so I moved carefully toward that one. It was thin and dark, and there were no obvious poison sacks on its head. I had an idea of what kind of snakes they were, but didn’t know for sure. I thought it was funny that it was going to stay there and let me grab it. I kept expecting it to shoot away. Lord knows that, on the ground, I would never have been able to catch it.

Okay, I thought. Here goes nothing.

I reached out and grabbed it as close to the head as I could, which wasn’t nearly close enough. The moment I touched it, the snake whipped its head around and bit me. It locked its jaws about four inches above my left wrist, and it hurt. I didn’t let go, but I was holding on to tree limbs with the other hand and couldn’t do anything about the snake. I had to climb down the tree one handed, even as blood began streaming down my arm and dripping from my elbow. I kept wondering if I was wrong – wondering if this was a poisonous species after all.

I slowly, carefully, made my way down the tree. Once on the ground I was able to grab the snake’s head and pull it off my arm. Instead of the fang marks I feared, there was a neat, elongated oval of bloody holes. Then I saw the snake’s teeth, which were long and curved. Up until that point I’d never seen teeth like that on a snake, ever.

It began whipping violently, trying to get loose, but I managed to slip it into my specimen bag and close it tight. It made a real ruckus inside that bag. Its partner, still up in the tree, had climbed all the way to the top and was pretending to be a stick again … but it was watching me.

I was a long way from the boat, so I stopped at a clear stream and rinsed my arm until it stopped bleeding, then began my long trek back. It was noon when I finally reached the boat. My mom applied bandages to my arm and both she and Dad kept asking me if I was sure it wasn’t poisonous. I was sure, because by then I had already looked it up in my field guide.

The snake was called a Racer (Coluber constrictor), and was described as arboreal and its main diet consisted of birds. This explained why it would pretend to be a stick, and also why it had such large curved teeth. These snakes sit in the trees waiting for birds to land, and before the birds know what’s happening they’ve become lunch.

Later I let this snake go back in the area where I’d caught it, hoping it would find its hunting partner. I thought perhaps they were a mated pair. Nowhere in any of the field guides did it mention these snakes staying together in pairs or groups. I may have witnessed a fluke, or some behavior no one had ever seen before.

That was one cool snake, but one I’d advise people to leave alone. If I look really close at my arm, I can still make out the scars from that bite.

From Tales of the Lizard Hunter
By Jerry J. Davis