While stacking bales at MIL yesterday afternoon, I scared a small lizard out of hiding.
I was astonished. I had never heard of lizards in Iowa. I didn't think it was a salamander, but what else could it be? I had NEVER heard of lizards in Iowa.
It wasn't very big, but it was very fast. I jumped a bale to get a good look at it and thought about trying to catch it. In the amount of time it took to think about catching it, it had run through a hole in the board wall. By the shadow I could see that it was climbing the outside of the wall. I would have had to run around the building or crawl through the calf chute to try and catch it. I decided that I had a BIG wagon of hay that needed to be unloaded and got back to work.
Tonight, I was telling Wife about it (she grew up on that farm) and she thought I was nuts. "Too much physical stress and sunshine without a hat?" she asked. I was not making it up. So I went to our friend, G**gle. (How did I graduate from college the first time without the Internet?)
Sure enough, when I looked up "lizard in Iowa" I found a site that talked about the five known species of lizard found in Iowa. Mine was a 5 lined Skink. Not commonly seen and not on the endangered list either.
This was better than finding and playing with a hog nosed snake!
6 comments:
Skink, hehehe.
I have those on my front porch in TN....
There was a fine five lined Skink,
Who appeared with a lizardly slink,
Kevin jumped o'er the bale
as he let out a wail,
And the skink disappeared in a wink!
Second verse:
Now his wife thought he’d not worn his hat,
For he sounded as goofy as a bat.
But he g**gled on-line,
Found the lizard just fine,
And the Skink link was proven, how ‘bout that!
There once was a fine five lined Skink
That drove Kevin to the edge of the brink
When he saw lizard small
With its blue tail and all
He thought he’d had too much to drink.
I actually saw this same lizard in Northwest Iowa this past summer. I was checking out and old railroad track with my girlfriend and I happened to look down and I thought it was a gardner snake at first. Then it came back out of hiding and i realized it had legs and a kind of stubby tail. I tried looking for it a couple of weeks later but I couldn't find it again. Thanks for letting me know what it was though.
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