February Tuesday...

I changed the Meandering photo this morning, though might change it again.  I'm not sure.  I couldn't find the exact picture I wanted for February, though with the month being so short, maybe I'll just leave these twinkling little dew drops.

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Wow, the front garden looks totally...strange.  Matthew and Rusty have taken out all the juniper bushes, and today are painstakingly removing the small pines in hopes they can be transplanted.  It's very cool to have the crap shrubs gone, though a big dirt mound for a front yard isn't too attractive.  Still, even just dirt is better than the ugly scrub.

One interesting thing, though sort of creepy.  Yesterday Alan watched both guys leaning into one of the juniper bushes they had just ripped out of the ground with the tractor.  Then Rusty jumped back, Matthew grabbed a shovel, picked something up and flung it across the road and over the embankment.  Curious.

Later in the afternoon I was outside and asked them what that had been all about.  Turns out they had unearthed a slumbering Alligator lizard.  What..??  Matthew calmly tells me it's a local lizard that looks like a baby alligator.  What..??  He goes on to say they like burrowing--for the Winter--in thick bushes like the juniper.  I ask if they are poisonous--I have to think of the dogs...right..??  Rusty says they are very aggressive and will bite, but aren't poisonous, hence why he jumped away from it.  Matthew smiles and says, "He (the lizard) was pretty angry at being kicked out of his home."  I make the mistake of asking how big it was...thinking a little Gecko-type size.  Matthew says (too casual for my taste), "Oh, it was just a small one, about 8 inches."  Holy Reptile, Batman..!!

This morning, I'm walking in the field next to the house for the dogs' early constitutional, and Matthew waves me over.  Crap.  It's another lizard they have dug up from the final juniper bush.  And yes, it looks exactly like an alligator.

Two photos to prove my point, taken from a search on Wikipedia.  I think the bottom picture especially resembles an alligator.

 

Unfortunately for me, the one I saw this morning was about a foot long.  Seriously.  A flaming foot, if it was an inch...and very ticked off that it had been made homeless.  If I hadn't been so creeped out, I would have thought to grab my camera.  It was all I could do not to climb onto the tractor shrieking like a girl.  So far, they have found three, and chucked them over the road, hopefully to find new digs elsewhere.

I really appreciate that the guys didn't kill them; after all, lizards have as much right to live as the rest of us.  But I also like that they were...ah...relocated.  With any luck, they don't have a homing instinct and will scuttle right back here to slay me in my bed to build a new home once things have settled down.

Later today, after the guys leave for the day, I will take some photos of the decimated yard.  I'm really looking forward to the stone wall getting built as that will separate us from the road; right now I feel like we're sitting on it.  They have done a huge amount of work in just a couple of days, so it shouldn't be too long before the tearing apart becomes the rebuilt.  Woo hoo.