Nothing Like a Little Excitement to Start Your Morning

Just before it was time for Audrey to leave for preschool this morning, I sent her into her room to get her backpack and jacket. A minute later I hear both her and Sterling (who had followed her) shrieking in terror. I found Audrey cowering on her bead crying and Sterling standing nearby crying. Both of them were looking toward Audrey's dresser.

"Something crawled under there and it scared me!" cried Audrey.

"Okay," I said. "I'll check it out. Was it a spider or something?"

"No! It was big and it had a head and eyes. I think it was a snake!"

I was still thinking it was a really big spider. "Go tell Daddy," I bravely told her. (I do NOT like spiders.) "We'll take care of it. Whatever it is will be gone when you get home from preschool."

Audrey took a flying leap of her bed, raced past her dresser, and told Daddy there was something scary in her room. After sending her off to preschool in the carpool, I came back inside. Melvin was holding Sterling (who was still frightened) and standing in our bedroom doorway, looking towards Audrey's room. "Carly," he called. "There is something in there. Can you see it?"

I saw a triangular head poking around the edge of the door jamb. Turns out it was a lizard. A pretty big one. It took some maneuvering, a slat board from under Dallin's bed, a bucket with a lid, a large piece of cardboard, some rearranging of Audrey's room, and about 20 minutes for us to get the job done. The lizard crawled back out around the dresser, under a chair, hung out in the corner while we tried to capture it, then headed for the closet. "Oh, no!" we groaned. The closet is not a good place to try and capture a lizard, especially Audrey's closet. (She cleaned her room the other day all by herself, which was amazing since I didn't directly tell her to go do it, and her idea of cleaning was to pick up everything off the floor and shove it either behind her chair or in the closet. But, hey, at least you could walk in her room. Progress!) Thankfully the lizard didn't get too far - too much stuff in there even for him (or her) - and we got the bucket over it a couple minutes later.

That whole time Dallin was sitting in the middle of our bed, far away from the action. Every now and then he would call out, "Did you get the lizard yet?" I was holding Sterling most of the time. He would look at the lizard and then whimper or say something in Sterling-speak to indicate he was worried about it. Every time I put him down outside the room he would start to cry. I finally had to stick him in his crib so that I could properly help escort our visitor out. Aren't we all so very brave?

Sorry to say, I don't have any pictures of our adventure. The rechargeable batteries that we use for our digital camera no longer hold a charge for any decent length of time. It seems that whenever I try to take a picture, there's only enough power to turn the camera on. By the time you press the shutter button, the camera displays a message about the battery being exhausted and then shuts itself off. Guess it's time to invest in some new batteries.

As for the lizard, it's still in the bucket outside. We didn't want to release it into the yard for fear it would find it's way back in to the house. We were contemplating a good place to release it and just didn't have time today. I guess if it's still alive tomorrow, we'll figure out something to do with it. Hope no one from PETA reads this. Do they care about lizards?