Double Feature Creature Show

My family may live in a suburban neighborhood, with brick houses that look eerily alike, a superhighway nearby and a Starbucks at every major intersection, but it’s often more like Wild Kingdom around here, especially at night.  Medium-sized turtles and small frogs sitting motionless on the sidewalk, probably pondering how to find their way back to the nearby creek…possums ambling across the alley, trying to get out of the glare of headlights…coyotes preying on neighborhood cats and howling right outside my home office window (can you say, Makes the Hair Stand Up On the Back Of Your Neck Like Nothing Ever Did Before?)  Sometimes we even get thrills and chills during the day, like the time a gorgeous red-winged hawk walked around my neighbor’s front yard for 20 minutes, or the time Luke cornered a black garden snake in the living room (don’t I get some kind of Mom crown for taking care of that?). I’m glad my husband was home for our latest creature encounter.  Make that two encounters, less than 6 hours apart. 

Late last Saturday afternoon, we were all sitting/standing around the living room, talking about our day—I’d just brought my teen home from drill team practice, Andy had just turned on the TV to get an update on the Masters golf tourney and my tween had just returned from a volleyball game. (Our exchange student was at a friend’s house.) Luke and Ben had just bounded into the living room, tails wagging, and were getting their bellies scratched by whoever cared to indulge them. I noticed a brownish blob, a small  “dark something” about 5-6 inches long on the rug between the love seat and the kitchen, but there are lots of small “mysterious somethings” on our rugs/floors/carpet at any given time—socks, leaves, dog toys, underwear—so I didn’t pay it much attention.  But then the blob began to move, and I am not kidding you, it reminded me of something out of the movie “Alien”.   It looked like a large slug and was writhing. On my 100% wool Pottery Barn rug.  From where I was sitting, I was the only one who could see it and my reaction went something like this: (Pointing) “OH. MY. GOSH. There is some kind of creature on the carpet, and it’s moving!!!” (My kids also tell me I said “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? but I can’t remember for sure. I was too creeped out.)   Two very tiny arms and legs suddenly appeared and reached up to claw at the air, then two more stuck out toward the bottom and started moving like crazy as well. The whole thing looked very “embryonic”.  Now everyone was looking and joining the conversation.  “EEW!” “Is that a mouse baby?” (Among all our wild animal friends, we have a resident garage mouse—yeah, fun, fun.) “It looks like a fetus!” “What’s a fetus?” “How did it get there?”  “That’s too big to be a mouse.” “Maybe it’s a rat!” “What if it’s a bat?” “EEEEEEW!” “Could Luke have brought something in from outside?” Andy informed us that yes, the dogs had just been outside.  I decided that Luke must have carried the newborn something in his mouth and deposited it proudly on the rug, and now we all realized, based on the rabbit population in our backyard, that it was probably a newborn baby rabbit. And from the looks of it, freshly newborn. Luke must have disturbed the mother mid-birth.  (Great…probably the wife of the FREAKING EASTER BUNNY!!!!!) So now the whole situation was heartbreaking… the choruses went up again, only differently.  “It’s going to die!” “Andy, do something!”  “Daddy, do something!”   “We’ll just have to raise it and bottle feed it!” proclaimed my teen.  In the end, Andy put it in a box and emptied the box under a backyard bush.  We confirmed via Google images that it was indeed a newborn rabbit, and we all hoped that somehow its startled mother would come back to find it.   (And that the Easter Bunny wouldn’t seek revenge…)

Fast forward to 10:30 p.m.  Andy, our tween, and I are in the car, driving back home from a friend’s house, where we ate leftovers from the Parents’ Prom and the adults reminisced on all the fun we had (yes, very good times were had by all at the “prom”!!).  I felt something on my leg just below the edge of my capris and thought it was the handle of my purse, then realized it was a lizard (or gecko, or anole—you pick it).  In the dark, I didn’t know how big it was, I just shrieked, grabbed and flung.  We pulled into the drive a few seconds later and when the light came on as the doors opened, I looked to see if I could find who had hitched a ride on my leg. To my horror and disgust, there on the floorboard was a lizard tail—and it was moving, flopping and writhing around even more than the living room bunny blob earlier in the day. (CUE MUSIC: Theme song from “Psycho”.) “AAAH! IT’S ALIVE!!!” I screamed. “Look at it! It’s not stopping! It’s like it has a mind of its own!!”

My 6th grader came around to my side of the car and calmly peered in.  “Mom, it’s supposed to do that…you know, like you used to say, ‘like a chicken with its head cut off.’” At that moment, I wished I’d never used that phrase to describe children’s behavior when they’re running wild.  And I hoped very much that the rest of the lizard wasn’t hiding in my purse, which had been sitting wide open in the car.