Lizards and Dinosaurs and Boys! Oh My!

My son is what you’d call “all boy.” He likes cars and trucks and dirt and bugs and pretty much anything that boys are supposed to like. I’m a girlie-girl, but even as a kid I climbed trees and got messy. I also didn’t fear snakes and bugs – my phobias are far more irrational. So I barely revolted the other day when we were playing outside and my son proudly announced, “Mommy! Look! I caught my first lizard!”

He held it up by its tail, as proud as if he’d caught is first fish. I gave the creature a good look. “Great, honey,” I said. “But I think he’s dead.” Rigor had already set in. (Man, I felt like Patricia Cornwell writing that sentence!) That didn’t phase my son. He shot through the backdoor, shouting, “I’m going to put him in a jar and keep him in my room!” He pried the top off of the Williams-Sonoma Caramel Apple pancake tin that I had given him to use as part of his makeshift drum set and dropped the little guy in. Then he demanded we punch holes in the top of the lid, “So that my dead lizard could breathe.” And so I did.

The excitement didn’t end there. He then insisted we call his dad, who was in the middle of his four-hour newscast. Luckily, we caught him during a commercial break and Truman rambled on the phone to my husband’s whispered responses, “Daddy, Daddy, guess what Daddy! I caught my first lizard. And it’s dead. And I put it in a jar and we put holes in the top so he could breathe!”

A few minutes later I got an e-mail picture from my husband with the caption, “I caught my first Lizard, too!” As it turned out, the folks from Walking with Dinosaurs were on Rick’s show promoting their event and someone snapped this photo. (We’re going to see the show next week. Should be awesome!) Truman was fascinated with the picture for a moment until we rationalized that Truman’s find was far more exciting because Daddy’s lizard wasn’t real and Truaman’s was, even though it was dead.

As promised, Truman saved that smelly, dead lizard until Rick got home a few hours later. Truman said he wanted to find a live lizard, but none were to be found this early in the year. (In another month there will be dozens on our doorstep.) So Rick worked out a deal that satisfied us all – he and Truman would bury the dead lizard. And so they used the trowel to dug up a spot in the garden, topped it with a stone and spread some clipped azaleas over the top. Rest in peace, little dead lizard guy.

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