All Creatures Great and Small

It's summer in South Florida and all the little critters are out. I have no idea where they go in the winter, but there aren't as many around. Heaven knows why because it's much nicer down here in the winter. But summer comes and there are critters everywhere! Meme's always complaining there are bugs on everything, eating her pretty plants, building webs and hornet's nests and heaven knows what else.

Personally I have no interest in either geckos or lizards. I pretty much ignore them because I've been living with them my whole life. But Meme loves them ... she actually builds stories around them as if they have real lives like you and me!!!

We have little lizards who run all over our patio and Meme's very attached to them. Some of them got together in the spring and had little babies. The other night one of the bigger ones wanted so desperately to get out ... almost throwing himself against the screen. So Meme opened the door a little bit, stepped back and out he went free as the wind. Ever since then she's been worrying she took the breadwinner away from the family, upset nature's natural balance in some way and Poppy thinks she's completely lost it.

Every time a big lizard is on the outside of the screen she thinks it's him trying to get back in. And one of the little babies just seems to wait there near the door, looking out. Meme says he's probably hoping his father will come back.

And Poppy says .... "yeah, right ...." and rolls his eyes.

So I got to thinking about all the little creatures out there scurrying around. We have palmetto bugs (which Meme says are just cockroaches but bigger plus they fly), we've got fire ants, spiders and teeny tiny frogs. One really frightening thing down here are the poisonous Bufo frogs. Dogs don't want to go anywhere near those because we can die within minutes. So I keep my distance from them, that is for sure! Meme doesn't make up histories about any of these little creatures.

I chase the birds, but they have this amazing ability to fly and for some reason I can't do that so the chase is fruitless. I ignore the palmetto bugs, stay away from the fire ants, spiders and frogs, even the lizards, geckos and of course those awful Bufo's!!!

But Meme just loves the lizards. And she got to wondering why people seem to warm up to some little creatures and not to others. She's never gotten particularly attached to a fire ant or a spider (although she admits she has always believed that up north you get a Daddy Long Legs in your house and you're in for a lot of good luck).

But she says there's something really endearing about the lizards. First of all, they won't hurt you but neither will a lot of other things. They're sort of ugly, kind of prehistoric, so that doesn't explain it.

The fire ants bite something fierce, the palmettos are just downright ugly and they scurry and we just don't want them around. We don't even think about the snakes because Meme likes to pretend they're not even there. And the spiders spin webs that are messy to walk into and Poppy says it's pretty weird when they land on your head.

So I tried to help Meme figure out what would make the lizards so particularly interesting to her, tried to figure out why she would think up stories about their families, wonder where they go in the winter, which one is the husband and which is the wife, and how long before the babies can go off on their own.

And then it came to me. Lizards are our friends, they eat those annoying mosquitoes, those pesky spiders and ugly palmettos; there is a natural food chain and we shouldn't tweak it. So we're sort of grateful to them and feel they're here to help us.

And besides that (and maybe most important of all) ... when was the last time you saw a spider selling insurance!!??

'Til Next Time ...

Molly