Marco vs. Lizard

If you know me, I'm pretty vocal about how much I hate the hour before bedtime. Kids are so ornery because they are tired, often still hungry, but fighting sleep because they are afraid of "missing out." So, to combat this hour from hades, I always try to get out of the house. Sometimes we take walks, sometimes we take a drive (not ideally, though, because Lily will end up falling asleep more often than not), sometimes we go to the nearest grocery store and I let the kids pick out one thing they'd like to eat before going to bed. When it's not hot, hot, hot outside and we can enjoy our front or backyard we play. I usually pull out bikes, let kids ride around, color with chalk, play in the sandbox, or we go hunting for various creatures. I've taken them on a spider hunt, a snake hunt, an ant hunt, but never a lizard hunt. Lizards are fast, speedy little creatures, and will never let us get close to them - so even if we went on a hunt - the lizard would disappear before we were able to blink. However, this day we found a lizard just chilling near our garage. He must have been a baby, or hurt, because he wasn't too keen on a speedy getaway, nor did he dart away when we approached him.

Of course, Lily just screamed and ran around yelling, "Lizard. Lizard. Lizard." Naturally, Marco followed her example and ran around screaming the same thing, but he wasn't afraid to reach out and grab the little fella.

They say that if you grab a lizard's tail, it will fall off as it tries to escape, and grow a new one. I didn't want to find out if this was an old wives tale or if there was truth to this statement. So while, Marco got close, and grabbed him several times, I was fortunate enough to not have to have a burial service for a random lizard tail. 

The lizard ran behind bikes, in front of the car, and all around the garbage can. Marco squealed with delight every time he darted off in a new direction and we followed. But the game quickly became frustrating when the lizard learned that the best getaway was scaling the brick retaining wall. Of course Marco wasn't happy with that scenario. 

But like I said earlier, our lizard must have not been a very strong guy because he kept on falling down and trying to repeat the process all over again. 

Once he disappeared into a crack for good, the lizard game was over. It was the longest I have seen Marco sit still and wait and watch for the lizard to reappear. 

The days following our lizard adventure, Marco would waddle over and check all the spots we had been playing with him the days prior. He was pretty crushed that our lizard wouldn't come out to play on command. But, it showed me that this was only the beginning of a love Marco has for animals.