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| Crested Anole lizard |
During
the Virgin Islands ‘safer at home’ phase, I have found myself engaging more
frequently with my non-human housemates - especially the lizards.
Most
days I’ll be working at a table on our screened ground-level porch. The screen
door is loose along the bottom, which has allowed a small lizard to come inside
and share my work space. It is a Crested Anole (Anolis cristatellus), which has a permanent ridge
along its back and tail. (Smaller crested anoles with light stripes on their
back are either young, or female.)
Anoles
are quiet and mostly eat bugs, which I appreciate. (The name rhymes with
ravioli.)
They
are curious, and not scary or threatening. However, this one sometimes shows
aggressive behavior if another anole enters its territory – even if it is on
the outside of the screen – by doing push-ups and extending the dewlap under
its chin.
Anoles
are quite plentiful, and a favorite food for the American Kestrels, and Great
Egrets living in the neighborhood. Recently I saw a kestrel blast over and
snatch an anole up from the ground just outside the porch in a split-second
attack. It definitely would have been safer inside the house.
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| Kestrels in the Virgin Islands mostly eat anole lizards |
Outside
the front door is a small entry deck, where my husband puts a bowl of kibbles
for the neighborhood cats. If they don’t finish it, a Ground Lizard (Ameiva
exsul) might
stop by to grab a bite. This lizard is sometimes called a ‘skink’ in the Virgin
Islands, although that name generally refers to a different, rarer species. The
ground lizard is larger and beefier than the anoles, with a snake-like body. It
moves very quickly, swinging from side to side, more like a ‘slink’.
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| Ground Lizard eating cat food |
There
is an old teak chair by the door, which for some reason recently attracted a
bright, young Green Iguana. They don’t usually come into the house, though
there was that time when my son’s girlfriend came to visit and reached into her
suitcase to find an iguana sitting in there. Someone must have left the door
open.
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| Young Green Iguana |
These
iguanas get darker, spiky-backed, and considerably less attractive when they
get larger – especially when one decides to take a dip in the pool.
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| Adult Green Iguana relaxing in our pool |
I
had another eek! moment recently when
I got out the large pasta pot and something dark was crawling around in it.
After I jumped, I realized it was not a gross roach, but a Dwarf Gecko (Sphaerodactylus macrolepus), which some people call a ‘wood slave’. They are nocturnal,
and I only seen them occasionally, like when I move a picture frame on the wall
and one is sleeping behind there and quickly runs off.
I
have never been able to get a good look at one, so I grabbed my camera and took
a few shots of this one before it crawled up the side of the pot and hopped
out.
The
photos turned out to have a surprisingly existential quality, I thought,
capturing the general feeling of safer-at-home isolation, confinement and
vertigo.
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| Dwarf Gecko in the pasta pot |
