Neighbors

We live along a forest preserve, and DaddyHealy likes to say that looking out of 3 out of 4 sides of our house, it looks like we are in the middle of the Amazon. It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. There are a lot of tropical plants here, and we only have direct neighbors on one side. But the forest is host to a whole variety of neighbors.....including this guy and his friends.

In this picture he was just hanging out in our side fenced in yard. I would say he's about 3 ft long head to tip of tale. That sounds bigger than it actually is, because the tail is over half the length. D thinks they look like chameleons, but they don't change color. There are lots of them around. They cross the road all the time (a whole new age of "Why did the XX cross the road" jokes going on in our house), and we find them just about everywhere in our neighborhood, and sometimes in the middle of town.

I guess he was looking for food. I have seen them hauling away grocery sacks of garbage from the neighbors. Our yard is fenced in with a concrete wall probably 18" or 2 ft high. I've wondered how they get in there, but we watched him till he left. He leapt up to the top of the concrete and snuck under the metal rails on the fence. Amazing! This picture is horrible, but I had to post it anyway. I doubt I'll ever get a chance to capture this scene again. he is totally airborne, and eventually grabs on the concrete with his claws and pulls the rest of the way up.

Leaping Lizards!!! (I couldn't resist that comment--maybe it's been a while since you saw Little Orphan Annie, but it reminded me of her.)

Our maid told me not to let the children play with them. (oh, huge danger of that....so glad she warned me....) They are not aggressive, but of course if threatened, or really hungry, they would bite.