The after party guest

Ashlee just posted about our neighborhood's block party, but the fun didn't end when we walked back to our end of the street. It's a bit ironic, but on the very night of the gathering intended to improve safety on our avenue, we found an uninvited visitor waiting for us at home. Our best guess is that the visitor actually came in last night, but we first found it this evening. Behold:

That's right, it's a lizard. Ashlee saw it before me, but thankfully she was across the room and able to control her hysteria. (She actually didn't freak out much at all.) This clock is in our kitchen, and is mounted above the opening to the sun room. The lizard is inches from the ceiling in this photo.

I've heard that people don't hesitate as much to kill insects, spiders, and "bugs" in general because they aren't like us. They have six, eight, many, on no legs. The may have lots of eyes, or none at all. Maybe this is why it was out of the question to do anything other than return the lizard to our front yard, a.k.a. front desert. Even though it wasn't much bigger than a cock roach and moved just as fast, if not faster, this critter had a ticket for the great outdoors, and not the grave. These pictures really don't do it justice though. It was kind of translucent. Had it just been sitting on a table, you might think it was a toy made out of rubber.

I was thinking about trying to kind of brush it off the wall and let it fall in a bucket, but I realized that wouldn't work. Once I took down the clock and scared the lizard a bit, I realized it was fast and capable of gripping the ceiling. If it fell in the bucket, it might climb out and end up who knows where. So I put the bucket over it, and tried to slide a stiff sheet of paperboard under it (like a spider in a cup). This didn't work; the lizard ended up between the paperboard and the wall. Finally, Ashlee's flash of insight provided the best idea. I grabbed the fish bowl-shaped vase that happened to be sitting on the counter (empty, waiting to be washed) and put it over the lizard. This time the lizard climbed into the vase itself, scaling the glass effortlessly. I easily covered the opening, setting our guest down on the counter, inside a glass cage:

Again, the pictures don't do justice: his rubbery appearance was quite bizarre. Anyway, after this picture, I took it out to front yard and released it on some rocks. He crawled off, moving his legs so fast I could barely make out their steps.

We realized it must have crawled in under our front door overnight. We left the big wooden door open with a fan drawing in nice cool air through the metal grate of the security door. We won't be doing that again. Titus was supposed to keep an eye out for intruders (he loves to sit there and watch everything outside), but apparently he nodded off during his watch.